My Apologies
Sorry for the lack of up dates as there is not much to be done until the components have arrived. And when they do, its going to be a fortnight’s worth of soldering and stuff. The boards have arrived first and so, I was able to prep them. The most time-consuming part would be soldering the green LEDs and also, bending the Red/Ice Blue LEDs to fit the board. I have figured out how to create a consistent result with a jig. The original idea costs a lot and is quite time consuming to make it. So, I went with another low-tech solution.
Wot?? No reflow?
Yeah. Originally, I planned to use reflow soldering for the boards. But after thinking about it, I regressed back to hand-soldering. There are a few reasons which I will elaborate:
- The reflow hot plate
The model that I have it tiny. It has an effective 5cm x 5cm working area and I don’t think it is going to last if I turn it on and off for a lot of the boards. The plates needs to heat up and cool down within a specific time frame and doing this repeatedly for every board will, well, break it. - The solder mask
The smallest solder mask from JLCPCB is 38cm x 28cm (~15inches x 11 inches) which takes up about a third of my Works table. I have no idea on how to cut up the razor sharp stainless steel plate and so, this is a bad idea.
And the Bad News goes to…
Despite most of the components arriving or have arrived, I only have enough to make half the run due to budget issues. I could only afford half of the PIC microcontrollers since they do cost quite a bit, despite getting them directly from the Factory. Not only that, I have yet to locate a Photocopy/ Print shop that can create the instruction manuals in low quantities.
All in all, most of the components have arrived save for the single DIP switch. Maybe the large package is a response of why the said switch did not arrive. But anyhow, it’s crunch time for me for the next few weeks and the manual printing solution is still unresolved.
Where to get what (no, not the Boards and I have not produced them, not even a link to sell them yet):
AndersFP (Anders Fogde Pedersen) PKD-2019 Blaster Download File
