Collaborate Disseminate
Folks from [Adafruit] are showing off a neat hack – USB host on RP2040, using the now-famous PIO peripheral. [Adafruit] builds a lot of RP2040 boards, and naturally, you gotta …read more Continue reading USB Host On RP2040 – With PIO
[Hans Summers] runs a site qrp-labs.com, selling self-assembly kits mostly for radio gear and GPS applications, and had some production problems with his QCX+ 5W QRP transceiver kit. They were …read more Continue reading Production PCB And Pogo Pins Produce A Clever Test Jig
Flipper Zero is an open-source multitool for hackers, and [Pavel] recently shared details on what goes into the production and testing of these devices. Each unit contains four separate PCBs, and …read more Continue reading How the Flipper Zero Hacker Multitool Gets Made and Tested
Now as far as problems go, selling so many products on Tindie that you need to come up with a faster way to test them is a pretty good one to have. But it’s still a problem that needs solving. For [Eric Gunnerson] the solution involved finding a quick and …read more
[Elliot] (no relation, but hey, cool name!) wrote in with his OpenFixture model for OpenSCAD. It’s awesome because it takes a small problem, that nonetheless could consume an entire day, and solves it neatly. And that problem is making jigs to test assembled electrical products: a PCB test fixture.
In the PCB design software, you simply note down the locations of the test points and feed these into the OpenSCAD model. ([Elliot] shows you exactly how to do it using KiCAD.) There are a few more parameters of the model that you can tweak to match your particulars, but you …read more
Continue reading OpenFixture Takes the Pain Out of Pogo Pins
In our final installment of Tools of the Trade (with respect to circuit board assembly), we’ll look at how the circuit board is tested and programmed. At this point in the process, the board has been fully assembled with both through hole and surface mount components, and it needs to be verified before shipping or putting it inside an enclosure. We may have already handled some of the verification step in an earlier episode on inspection of the board, but this step is testing the final PCB. Depending on scale, budget, and complexity, there are all kinds of ways to …read more
