Building the Prototype of your new project
This step is fairly straightforward if all of the preparation was detailed enough. There can be quite a lot of parts in a relatively simple circuit board. Every resistor,capacitor and IC chip must be properly soldered into place. Most of the parts are polarity conscious, which means that if it is inserted backwards, the part or the pcb may be damaged, so assembly on a small or large scale must be treated with care and consistency.
Whether one or twenty boards are being made the act of gathering all of the parts to be loaded onto the board remains one of the slowest steps. All of the parts must be ready and available in the workshop before any work can commence. A dedicated set of production tubs are prepared to help collect and identify each part in a project. This speeds things up in assembly, but explains why it is uneconomical to create only a few modules. Typically a minimum production run would be of ten or twenty modules.
If the module is destined to live in a sealed enclosure, then after soldering no further preparation is required. Where dampness and corrosion may be factors, the boards may be sprayed with a clear protective lacquer. This step takes additional preparation as connectors and sockets need to be shielded from the insulating spray. (Invisible to the eye, the clear spray can insulate critical items and cause all kinds of strange problems to a module during testing)
If the assembled module contains only passive parts, then it ready for fitting to an enclosure and testing. If a microprocessor is present, the module won't do anything until a program is written and transferred from a computer into the completed board.
Click here to return to CREATING A NEW PRODUCT
This step is fairly straightforward if all of the preparation was detailed enough. There can be quite a lot of parts in a relatively simple circuit board. Every resistor,capacitor and IC chip must be properly soldered into place. Most of the parts are polarity conscious, which means that if it is inserted backwards, the part or the pcb may be damaged, so assembly on a small or large scale must be treated with care and consistency.
Whether one or twenty boards are being made the act of gathering all of the parts to be loaded onto the board remains one of the slowest steps. All of the parts must be ready and available in the workshop before any work can commence. A dedicated set of production tubs are prepared to help collect and identify each part in a project. This speeds things up in assembly, but explains why it is uneconomical to create only a few modules. Typically a minimum production run would be of ten or twenty modules.
If the module is destined to live in a sealed enclosure, then after soldering no further preparation is required. Where dampness and corrosion may be factors, the boards may be sprayed with a clear protective lacquer. This step takes additional preparation as connectors and sockets need to be shielded from the insulating spray. (Invisible to the eye, the clear spray can insulate critical items and cause all kinds of strange problems to a module during testing)
If the assembled module contains only passive parts, then it ready for fitting to an enclosure and testing. If a microprocessor is present, the module won't do anything until a program is written and transferred from a computer into the completed board.
Click here to return to CREATING A NEW PRODUCT
