We have a brand new digital scope now in the electronics lab at TechShop. Many thanks to Tektronix for the donation, and to Monty Goodson and Bart Massey for making the donation happen.
The scope is a MSO2024 4-channel 200MHz 1Gsps digital oscilloscope and
logic analyzer. More info at http://www.tek.com/products/oscilloscopes/mso2000/
Please feel free to use the scope, but we ask you to treat it nicely. Especially the probes, which are expensive and somewhat delicate. We advise you to leave them on the 10x setting unless you are absolutely sure you need the higher sensitivity — this will help avoid frying the scope inputs.
There will be a workshop on Surface Mount Soldering at TechShop on Saturday, 19 December from 1 – 5pm.
So, you have a circuit board and a bag of parts you need to assemble. Or you’ve designed a circuit board in Eagle, gotten it fabricated, and you just got it back. Now you see that the parts which looked so big in Eagle are actually REALLY DANG SMALL. What are you going to do? How are you supposed to solder that?!
Working with tiny Surface Mount parts is challenging but can be done in the comfort of your own home. Come to Dorkbot’s Surface Mount Soldering Workshop, presented by Jim Larson, held at OpenTechSpace at TechShop, on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 from 1pm to 5pm.
When you’re done, you’ll have a step-up voltage module to take a AA battery up to 5V.
To sign up, email smd-workshop@denizen.org.
Cost will be $35, payable at the class.
Please bring:
- A soldering iron
- A pair of tweezers
- A pair of wire cutters
Class will be held at:
TechShop Electronics Lab (OpenTechSpace)
10100 Southwest Allen Boulevard
Beaverton, OR 97005
Workshop: circuit design for fabrication (TechShop Dec 5, 1-5pm $35)
As many of you may be aware Laen from dorkbotpdx has been putting together a group ordering process for circuit board fabrications somewhat like SparkFun’s BatchPCB service except with less time lag and the fabrication is done in the USA.
To introduce you to the tools needed to create circuit boards for this service (and most other circuit board services) we are presenting a workshop teaching you how to design a circuit board using Eagle PCB with an emphasis on getting designs that can be fabricated.
Workshop Time and Location
* December 5th through OpenTechSpace at Techshop (10100 SW Allen Blvd., Beaverton, OR 97005) (Google Calendar Link)
Follow-up Session:
A follow-up session will be offered on December 6th, 1pm-5pm at PNCA (NW 12th and Johnson, room 205), to go over your designs, help with any problems, and getting them ready for submission for fabrication.
Fabrication included
Signing up for the class gets you three copies of your (up to 2 square inch) design in the December order. Designs submitted by the 10th of December will be included in this months PCB run and can be picked up at the meeting on the 21st (or mailed).
Topics covered.
- Creating schematics
- Organizing your files and libraries.
- Laying out your parts effectively.
- Routing your signals
- Creating / finding parts that you need.
- Documenting your board in the silkscreen
- Using DRUs to design for a specific board fabricator
- Using the ERC to check your designs for problems
What you will need
You should have some basic understanding of circuits but it is not critical You will need to bring a laptop which is capable of running eagle (linux,windows or mac — see http://www.cadsoft.de/info.htm). The class is $35 and is limited to 30 so it is best to reserve a space in the class. Please rsvp at http://tempusdictum.com/tdproducts.html (eagle for fabrication)