In this project, we had to customize a pre-made circuit schematic in a software called KiCad, generate paths for the circuit and use a Carvera to print it, then solder the parts to make it functional.
This was very out of my realm of knowledge, but I worked with it very carefully and I think my product was fairly successful.
Changing the design was fairly simple. I pulled the repository and loaded the design into KiCad. Then, I dragged around some of the connections at random and added a smiley face, a tag, and a fun wingding. Overall, this was the easiest step of the entire process.
This was by far the hardest section, because I am not good at arts and crafts, and operating on the millimeter scale was not my strong suit.
I used the labels on the bags to figure out the Ohms of each resistor, and placed the parts according to the schematics. I had to start over multiple times because I accidentally moved the parts around or wiped the solder. It took me about one hour and I finished strong, although I think some of the solder globs were too large and will need to be cleaned up later.
To actually create the circuit board, I loaded my personalized design into the second program, MakeraCAM. There, I generated the paths for the machine to make countours, pockets, and drill holes in the board. Shoutout to Matthew and Leah for giving the improved parameters for the contour routines, because of them I didn't have to play with the depth of the contours, and was able to get them right the first try.
Then, I exported and loaded the paths into the Carvera Controller. I set up the Carvera by clamping down a fresh piece of copper, and let the machine run. After a slow printing process with the machine, I had my clean, printed board.
