Electronics Production

This week was very interesting for me because I like to fabricate SMD based circuit and solder them. Although it was bit challenging for me to solder such small components, by the I managed it. In this week our task was to produce our own "FAB ISP in circuit programmer". And, code uploaded successfully on my fabricated ISP in the very first attempt.

    Assigned tasks of the week:

  1. Group Assignment
    • Characterize the specifications of your PCB production process
  2. Individual Assignment
    • Make an in-circuit programmer by milling the PCB
    • Then, optionally trying other processes

Learing outomes

Group Assignment:

For group assignment, we have to characterize the specifications of PCB production process and for that we are using Roland monoFAB SRM-20 Milling machine. For learning process in both group and individual assignments we are using basic PCB Board which is FR-1. We are fabricating a Traces-width board, which has a traces which is very near in different sizes. For cutting and traces we are using 1/32 and 1/64 drill bit respectively.

Fabricating PCB

We used these png files for trace and outline

Traces file using 1/64 drill bit to trace. Outline file using 1/32 drill bit to cut the board


Steps for generating .rml files:

Following gif file shows the process of generating rml files

GIF images showing the process of generating rml files

After generating RML files, we send both files to ROLAND monoFAB SM-20 Machine. following steps describes the working of machine.

Following gif file shows the process and working of the machine.

GIF images showing the process of generating rml files

The End Result of group Assignment

The group assignment shows that how much precisely machine works with 1/64 drill bit.

Individual Assignment:

Being an electronics engineer, this tasks was not challenging for me. I have basic knowledge about soldering of through-hole components. But, soldering of SMD based components was very new for me. I liked to work with Roland SRM 20 which is available in our lab.

The task for this week is to make an in-circuit programmer by milling the PCB. So, for that I download development board file from this week's lecture.

Following images shows my downloaded files

Traces file and Interior file


I generated .rml files through FabModules. Following images are shown.

Generating .rml file for traces


Generating .rml file for interior


MonoFab SRM-20


Setting the origin


drill bits 1/64 for traces. 1/32 for cut interior


Machine is milling the board


Bill of Material (BoM)


Soldering the board

Now I am in my favourite job that is soldering the board. Easily I soldered all the required components onto the board.

Soldering the board


Debugging process

Circuit board is soldered, now the main step comes, that is checking the connectivity of the paths and checking proper flow of source in the circuit on each component. So, for that I used digital multimeter, I checked connectivity of ground, VCC and other pins of microcontroller. When this step completed successfully, I jumped to the next step that is up the circuit.

Debugging the board


ISP board is ready for programming


We dedicated one computer of our lab to Linux, and installed Ubuntu in that computer. I never used Linux based OS before, so it took much time to programme the board.

Connected my ISP board with my Instructor's ISP board in order to burn program in my board through Linux.


Few glimps of Linux results while programming my board

Here it shows that two ISPs are connected, means my board is activated successfully.


When I connected my board to laptop, laptop detected it as USBtiny.

The last thing is to remove zero ohm resistor from the board, for using it to burn bootloader other microcontroller boards.

Download all files from here

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