Saturday, June 20, 2009

Populating the PCB

First, apologies for the lack of photo evidence... my digital camera has certainly seen its last days.

The PCB is pretty easy to populate; everything is nicely labeled, and no components are too close to each other. Everyone has their own way of preparing parts and soldering them, so I won't go into that. In general, I added components based upon the height of their profile, saving the biggest things for last, as well as those that wouldn't move around.

The resistors came first, as there's so many and they're so simple. After that, I added the diodes. Two of the three different diode types have thicker leads, so they're a bit hard to lay completely flush.

Following those I did the IC sockets and the two on-board pots. I really should have done it in the opposite way, as the sockets have a slightly higher profile than the pots. But it all worked out fine. Following that I did the capacitors, and finished with the transistors, since they're the most sensitive (and stay pretty well fixed when you've got the board upside-down and are soldering).

If you don't want the CV capabilities, you should add a jumper between CVIN and CVOUT at this point. I wanted that functionality, so left them clear until instructions would arrive...

All things considered, this part was a pretty easy assembly. Connecting the PCB to the switches, pots, and AC jack will be the next step...

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