🎵 "PCBWay, PCBWay, come and get your PCBs from PCBWay, hey!" 🎵

Alright, I know I keep going forever between updates, but I finally had some time with the right kind of obsessiveness to sit down and get boards designed and sent off to a manufacturer. Not only that, but PCBWay graciously reached out to sponsor boards for me!

This entry will be part showing off my design, and part sponsored product review for PCBWay. Note that while PCBWay did give a hefty discount on these boards, they haven't paid me in any other way and haven't asked to review this blog. Some photos have been retouched to correct camera and lighting errors (I should really get a nicer setup) but are representative of how the boards look IRL and in good light. The following thoughts are my own, influenced as they are.

Main Board:

So first off, what did we change from last time? Well the giant trace widths and single board design wasn't working out, so we switched to an enclosure with front panels to hold the mechanics, and used the remaining routing flexibility (and "smaller" traces, though they're still 12 mil!) to shrink the mainboard.

I unfortunately forgot to order a few parts to do a final assembly, but while we're waiting for those we can at least oogle the boards:

I kept the board layout simple with wide spacing for ease of routing / rework and because the large case needed for the panels gives me extra room. There's also some argument about "retro feel" but we're breaking enough rules here...

One thing a big wide board doesn't do is show off PCBway's capabilities, so had some fun with PCB art and made a pixel version of my visored lynx character:

Now that's some pretty gold and impressive registration. This was a last minute addition, but one that came out really nice and gives me some ideas for future projects..

Case & Panels:

The one set of parts I had already ordered were for the case and mechanicals, so let's skip to the end of the story to see how those'll look.

The case I've chosen is a Bud Industries Plasticase PC-11495 and I used the budget leeway from the PCBWay sponsorship to have PCB panels made for it. I ordered these in blue with ENIG plating and the result is quite stylish if I may say so:

The "display" has a front face panel that's backed by an LED board, and the front panel is purely mechanical. Everything lined up and registered perfectly between display boards, and the front panel is both stylish and sturdy. I did make a slight fudge sizing the speed potentiometer mount, but I'll fix that in another revision

In conclusion

I still have parts on order and a few design issues to fix, but overall I'm quite pleased with how things are going, and excited to get things built when the last few parts arrive! Building a system like this has been a long time dream, and getting this level of finish wouldn't be possible without PCBWay's help. Both Liam, my sponsorship contact, and Aria, my sales engineer have been helpful in getting this going and sorting out issues (that I caused) in my order. If getting PCBs for your project is something that interests you then I'd encourage checking PCBWay out at pcbway.com.

Until next time, (when hopefully we'll have it booting!)

Juniper