pcb – Polargraph http://www.polargraph.co.uk drawing by robot Sun, 13 May 2018 21:48:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.7 New boards ho http://www.polargraph.co.uk/2013/08/new-boards-ho/ http://www.polargraph.co.uk/2013/08/new-boards-ho/#comments Wed, 28 Aug 2013 08:42:46 +0000 http://www.polargraph.co.uk/?p=822 Continue reading ]]> Well that’s a nice surprise – the new v1.4 boards work!  I shouldn’t be surprised I guess, since they are just the 1.3 boards with less stuff on, but it’s always nice when something just works.

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I had a thought when soldering this up though: Because the pins for motor A protrude through the board, they need to be filed down and insulated so that they don’t short against the housing of the USB-B connector on the arduino underneath (a blog about it).  This is a pain, and in principle (if not in practice), makes for a weaker connection.  This has never been a problem for building the full kit, because the arduino mega I use has a mini-USB connector, but for everyone else (and all the vitamin kit parts), it’s a glaring issue.

So I think I will swap motor A with motor C, so that by default, for polargraph, that filing doesn’t need to be done.  Will still be wise to put a bit of electrical tape on it because it could still contact, given the right pressure.

Motor C was added because I had the space, and also because I have a few plans for things that might like to have a third axis of control.  The parts for motor C will be unpopulated by default, for Polargraph products anyway.

So, I think I’m immediately going to revise this to swap A and C, but also I might try to move the servo and endstop pins, and add some more lights.  I’ve got all these LEDs to use up!

Another fortnight for v1.5.

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