In order to reduce the impact of returning home from holidays, this year I prepared a small present that would make me want to get back: not one, but three PCBs!
In July I designed the PCB for a secret project (it will be a birthday present). Then I added a board to simulate the spin of the WE6167 dekatron. And at the last minute I designed a board that would modulate either an HB100 or a CDM324 radar transceiver.
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| Each design is packed separately. |
All the design was done in KiCAD 6 and each board had some challenges to learn something new: proper Net spacings for HV, new component footprint that includes a large "hole", adding an ICSP connector.
I chose JLCPCB as fabhouse, but I needed to slow them down so that the packet would arrive once I am already back at home, not before.
First of all, I chose three different colors for the three designs, and these colors take two extra days for production.
I submitted the order on a European Saturday afternoon and it went in production almost immediately: I didn't check that JLCPCB respects business hours, but they are open 7 days a week! Little mistake on my side, I lost one day, but otherwise I would be tempted to make more changes to the boards.
Then I paid for the slowest shipping option.
Why all this trouble? I didn't bring a computer with me on holidays, so I had to submit my order before departing.
Who came home first? PCBs, of course! They beat me for 2 days, shipping was too fast.
The secret project has passed the hardware smoke test and is now in the hands of the firmware development team (it's always me).
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| Three designs, three colors. |
