Adventures in Robotics

Board Burning

Our first project in which I was ready to "record" was the etching (or "burning") of the the board for the PIC16F871 microcontroller. Below is a series of fotographs detailing the majority of the process.

Our Story Begins with Nate cutting up the "blue paper" to fit the foil pattern of the board. We do this to save blue paper because it is expensive. By cutting out only as much as we need, we save blue paper for other useless projects.

Here is Pres. David affixing the blue paper onto a sheet of paper containing the foil pattern. Taping the blue paper upon the printed foil pattern was very delicate work. Therefore, David would not let anyone else do it.

Now we have a nice new foil pattern ready to create a PCB. We repeat the process to form the back side of the PCB (did I mention that we were creating a double-sided PCB?).

An important step involved with transferring a foil pattern onto a PCB is to clean the copper surface. We gave all of that laborious work to Jessica -- fortunately, she seems to be enjoying it. This board required a Lot of cleaning before we got it acceptably shiny.

Lining up the foil pattern with the board was very delicate work. Therefore, David would not let anyone else do it.

Wenzheng jumped at the chance to help in the project. However, his enthusiasm was suddenly curtailed when he found out that he was given the task of ironing the copper board (and Pres. David's laundary). In this foto, he is really angry -- he just likes to smile.

Everyone wanted to make sure that we left the iron on for exactly five minutes (except me, I like taking pictures -- and I do not have a watch).

Violá -- Five minutes later (and approximately two minutes after that) we have a (nearly) perfectly masked board. Well actually, only half of a perfectly masked board. The other side of the board also had to be masked -- but this is one of those "wash, rinse, repeat" sort of things, so for brevity, no fotos were actually taken of the process.

Here we have David drilling the holes into the board. Drilling the holes in the board was very delicate work. Therefore, David would not let anyone else do it.

Of course, the board must also be cut down to size. We would not want to use up an entire copper board for such a small project. Cutting down the board was very delicate work. Therefore, David would not let anyone else do it.

Kadjo helped, too. He kept our spirits high by playing show tunes. Unfortunately, I am not the least bit cultured, so I could not sing along.

Am I not talented? I was able to take this shot of me burning the board. I am not really happy here. It was the fumes from the etching solution that was getting to me. That was also how I was able to snap this foto.

Here is a foto of the actual etching process. Do you not believe me about the chemical fumes? Blue dots, blue dots, everywhere.

Here is a foto of the final product -- and me, thrilled to have experienced my first industrial-strength contamination.

David said that by tinning the entire board, the foil pattern can last a lot longer without ever tarnishing. Tinning the foil pattern was very delicate work. Therefore, David would not let anyone else do it.

There you have it: the board had been completed. All that was left to do was to solder the components to the board, but that was a different matter (of which I took no fotos).

We are, right now, well on our way to a fully developed PIC programmer card. We have to repeat the above process five more times for the rest of the microcontrollers. We'll have a functioning robot well before the end of the semester.