Updates
Progress notes on what I'm building.
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Week of October 12: Final review passed, BOM locked in
The board passed its final design review, the bill of materials got finalized with a call on brokers for a few shortage-hit ICs, and the motor control board's driver spacing got wrapped up.
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BOM finalized, brokers for some ICs, and motor driver spacing
Finalized the bill of materials, including deciding whether brokers are acceptable for a few signal chain ICs hit by the shortage, and wrapped up spacing on the motor control board.
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Final design review passed, now it's down to connectors
The board passed its final design review with the team, datasheet requirements and routing both signed off. All that's left before production is picking the headers that connect it to the rest of the system.
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Week of October 5: LVDS tuning, test points, and silkscreen
Two days of PCB work, checking LVDS length tuning and filtering the power input, then sorting out test points, passing a preliminary design review, and cleaning up silkscreen.
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Test points, a preliminary review, and silkscreen cleanup
Worked out test points that function with the board inside a metal box and outside it, passed a preliminary design review on every section, and cleaned up the silkscreen ahead of a final review Monday.
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LVDS length tuning and a pi filter on the power input
Went back over the LVDS pairs to make sure the accordion tuning sections hold the target impedance, then brought power onto the board with a pi filter to keep switching noise out in both directions.
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Week of September 28: Impedance profiles and the power section
A short PCB week, getting the impedance profiles set up in Altium and laying out the power section of the board.
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Bringing up the power section of the board
A full day on the power portion of the PCB. Fuse and diodes for protection, a solid ground plane with short loops, LDOs for clean rails, and a power plane split by voltage.
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Impedance profiles, and a bug in Altium's calculator
Set up the impedance profiles for the new board today, hit a bug in Altium's impedance calculator, found a way around it, and filed a report.