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    Lab 4 Elec Bootcamp (2016)

    You have ~2 hours to work your way through these activities.  Plan your time accordingly!

     

     

    Part 1: Practice Soldering and Desoldering At Your Benchbench (~30min)

    • Watch some quick videos

    • Gather up some materials

      • one used PCB (should have old components already soldered in the board)

      • one piece stranded-core wire (black or red or green or white)

      • one piece of solid-core wire  (blue or orange or yellow or grey)

      • one 8-pin socket

      • about 1 foot length of solder.

    • Clean and re-tin your solder tip  

      • Your solder iron tips should already be clean and tested, but if solder does not melt onto the tip use Solder Iron Tip Tinner (found next to the Heat Shrink Tubing)    Weller tips have several coatings.    Some tips are old and need just a small amount of rubbing with emery cloth  to remove oxide layer, but try to avoid doing this.

    • Watch as the rosin boils off the solder.   

      • Occasionally bubbles up enough to end up on hands and eyes.  

    • Use side cutters to trim long wires on back of PCBs.   

      • Notice how far clipped items can fly from the boards, watch out for people around you.

      • Use 3rd Hand if necessary.

    • Practice soldering the following:

      • solid-core wires into the PCB

      • stranded-core wires into the PCB   (check for loose strands!)

      • 8-pin sockets into the PCB (solder 1 corner pin first, then ensure the socket is flat on the PCB, then solder the remaining pins)

      • put two stranded-core wires together to form one longer wire.  

      • coat one stranded-core wire with excess solder.   Feel how much stiffer and more brittle the excess solder makes the wire

    • Watch some desoldering videos

    • Practice some desoldering

      • Remove 2 wires (stranded or solid) from a used PCB.  

      • Remove one BJTs.  See if you can remove it without clipping the leads from the BJT or destroying the component.

     

    • Get a TA/instructor to inspect your soldering and desoldering work.

     

    Part 2: Solder one QRD and one Motor for your tape follower (~45min)

    Watch the video  to see the parts.   

    • Solder the QRD  (1 for each person) 

      • Gather materials

        • 3 pieces of  stranded wire, ideally from the used wire bins    You will need ~8 inches of wire length for each color.

        • male header pins

        • 330 ohm resistor

      • Cut male header pins to correct number of pins.    It is plastic, so you can use your side cutters.  Be careful, as you may accidentally cut adjacent pins in the header and parts may fly into your face.  Return extra pins to bin.

      • Solder, hot glue, heat shrink connections

        • For the QRD, you will be including an appropriate resistor (330 ohms)  inside the QRD wire as shown in the sample and  in the diagram here.  

      • Mark the resistor value on the  outside with a label.

    • Get Lab instructor / TA to inspect your connector.

     

    Solder the Motor (1 for each person) (~15 minutes)

    Watch the video  to see the parts.   

    Use two pieces of stranded-core wire, approximately 8inches in length.

    You can use the screw terminals on the TINAH motor outputs to attach the motor.

     

     

    Part 3: Check out connectors and PCBs in other room

     

    Try one of each connector.  Try not to waste attempts, as each connector varies in price from reasonable to not reasonable.

      • Quick Connect Terminals  

      •  Deans Connectons (for TINAH and battery)  

      •  IDC connectors for ribbon cable

      • MTA-100 Connectors (single-wire connections to board)

      • Wire Nuts

     

      • PCBs and Wire

      • Polarization on 8-pin socket

      • board-to-board vs. board-to-wire connections

      • PCBs for 253 (Boris and Natasha).

     

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