Boardmaking

Time constraints be iffed, it's time to print my first PCB!

It took a while, but I was finally able to print the schematic onto photopaper.

The PCB that I was using was really badly oxidized, with disgusting fingerprints all over it. But with a little help from a sanding block and some acetone, the board came out all right in the end.

The actual process of printing was minimally irritating. Aligning the photopaper on top of the board took a while, but soon, the laminating process started.

After washing the board, getting all of the paper off, and exposing the toner, the board looked quite nice, actually.

After a dunk in the Ferric Chloride, and a dab of acetone, the board was finished!

Now comes the wait while all of the parts get here so I can populate...

The Next Step

So it's been a rough 2nd semester of school. Thankfully, with college apps finally over, I can get back to work.

The project I've started on recently is the next step following the spark gap coil I constructed late last year. I'm going Solid State!

I've found a schematic for building a basic solid state coil on the internet, courtesy of Steve Ward. The name of this particular version is the MicroSSTC. A link to Ward's webpage and the schematic can be found below.

I had a few concerns about the schematic itself. The diodes on the full bridge rectifier seemed to be insufficient to handle the wall voltage, so I switched then out for more resilient MUR440RLs . Also, the schematic recommended using a TC4420 as a gate driver. However, due to the fact that I had the perfectly functional alternative of UCC37322's lying around, I decided to change that up in the schematic as well.

So the original schematic is:

All credit to Steve Ward.

I redrew the schematic with the edits in Eagle, and after some advice from a mentor, the final schematic turned out like this:

Which, when routed on the board in Eagle, turned out thus:

Hopefully, I will have this printed within a few days.