complete project

[Tinkerer]

Sid,

when you have your schematics ready, go to TOOLS->TRANSLATE TO PCB
When you are satisfied with the PCB, go to OUTPUT->MANUFACTURING PLOTS

All the best
Tinkerer

[sido]

Yes, it is DesignSpark! It is realy easy to learn and have a lot part´s. You can download missing part´s and it is all free.

Hi mschmahl,

First of all, well done on your first attempt at your designed board. Looks good.

Second of all, i listened to you and Tinkerer about designspark EDS and have downloaded the program.
Can tell you both that i like it so far.

Managed to figure out and import the Dispic4011 in the library which i want to use for the UNIPI. Took me a while, but figured it out.

Have a few questions???? about your board above you have designed.....When you have finished looking for errors and ready for the board to be made...Do you have to sent it out due to the complexity, like the inclusion of vias and also being double sided??

And how do you get to see the Negative artwork with designspark if you wanted to print it out for a single sided board. Have not looked through the full Tutorials as of yet, so asking as it may be something simple and that i may have missed.

Cheers Sid

[Tinkerer]

You said you have a lot of power outages and overvoltages that take down appliances. If your hard drive died in one of these events and symptom is "no motor spin" it is possible your drive is ok. There is a TVS diode on each supply input. In such events one of these can short and cause this. Remove it and all is well but your drive really will die the next event unless you replace the TVS with another.

Hi bklein,
thanks for the help.
The LACIE external hard drive is powered with it's own PSU. The symptom is "no motor spin". The power ON diode blinks on the drive and on the PSU, like there is a power drop when the disk motor wants to start. For the time being I don't know yet if the PSU is working correctly or not. I will open the drive when I am settled in the new home and see if I can at least save the information on the disk.

Thanks for the advice.

Tinkerer

[Tinkerer]

To all,
thanks for the good wishes and offers of help. My presence on the forum may be a bit erratic for a few months, but I will try to stay connected as much as possible to help with the design as much as I can.

Anybody's help, comments, constructive critic and advice with the design is most welcome.

Tinkerer

[Tinkerer]

Hi all,

here is my first effort to make a PCB for the Tinkerer_SB PSU&TX.
It is for 2x6V batterie and 50-cm roundcoil. The schematic is from http://www.geotech1.com/forums/showt...677#post155677 with some changes that tinkerer discussed with me. I send the PDF with this changes.

IT IS A TESTBOARD WITHOUT WARRANTY OF FUNCTION!!!

And it is my first time to make a pcb. I have not respected any rules of construction a low noise rig, or other rules for making a proper pcb. I think it can be improved a lot, so all comments to make it better are welcome.
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Hi mschmahl,

congratulations for your excellent work on the board.

Here are some things to consider:

with everything working as it should, there can be an average current of about 3A in the coil and mosfet. This is the average, not the peak. therefore, a heath sink is recommended on the mosfet. Also check the TX traces on the board and the connectors, if they can handle 3A continuous average current.

The average coil current must not be confounded with the TX power consumption from the battery, which is normally about 60mA to max 170ma. The small consumption is due to the power recycling in the resonant tank.

The Flyback capacitors C1 and C6, must be high voltage capacitors. I have tried quite a few different kinds, but have not found any significant differences. Some of these are physically quite large, so enough space must be left.

For your purpose, a Flyback time of about 10us is probably ideal. This will need about 10+10n. I say about, because the coil inductance will vary depending on the wire you use and how tight you wind it and the capacitors have some tolerance, maybe 5% or 10% or 20%. All this is OK because we leave some leeway in the timing.

However, under the worst circumstances, the timing could be a little short. This would have the effect of increasing the power consumption quite a bit. The problem can be solved by adjusting the timing or by adjusting the capacitance.

All the best and good luck with the testing.

Tinkerer

[satdaveuk]

Thanks

Hi Tinker
Hope your move goes smoothly and you recover the data from your hard drive ok.
Thanks for the design spark application, have downloaded it and when time permits will have a play.
Didn't know this program existed until you mentioned it on here, reading the tutorial it seems quite a powerful user friendly program.

Anyway hope all goes as well as can be expected for you, saying that by the sound of things it cant get much worse.
Regards

[bklein]

I have little time at present. My 240 GB storage hard disk crashed and I am packing up my lab for moving.

You said you have a lot of power outages and overvoltages that take down appliances. If your hard drive died in one of these events and symptom is "no motor spin" it is possible your drive is ok. There is a TVS diode on each supply input. In such events one of these can short and cause this. Remove it and all is well but your drive really will die the next event unless you replace the TVS with another.

[sido]

Yes, it is DesignSpark! It is realy easy to learn and have a lot part´s. You can download missing part´s and it is all free.

Similar to Diptrace. I will also download this EDS and have a go and compare the two.

Thankyou and great looking board you have.

Cheers Sid

[mschmahl]

Yes, it is DesignSpark! It is realy easy to learn and have a lot part´s. You can download missing part´s and it is all free.

[sido]

Hi mschmahl, great looking board, well done.

What EDS program are you using....Designspark???

Sid

[Pete the Builder]

Hi all,

here is my first effort to make a PCB for the Tinkerer_SB PSU&TX.
It is for 2x6V batterie and 50-cm roundcoil. The schematic is from http://www.geotech1.com/forums/showt...677#post155677 with some changes that tinkerer discussed with me. I send the PDF with this changes.

IT IS A TESTBOARD WITHOUT WARRANTY OF FUNCTION!!!

And it is my first time to make a pcb. I have not respected any rules of construction a low noise rig, or other rules for making a proper pcb. I think it can be improved a lot, so all comments to make it better are welcome.

mschmahl, that's a great effort for a first attempt! You've got the right ideas - nice thick power and ground traces, and keeping them as short as possible.

One trick to try : if you have a lot of short zig-zag tracks, you might be able to realign the components slightly so the tracks are more straight. You'd be surprised at how many times this makes routing the same components so much easier. When that happens, of course you must say it is by clever design!

Also, once you've routed all the tracks, have a look to see if some tracks can be swapped to the bottom layer, so most tracks are on one layer (I usually try to put as many tracks as possible on the bottom of the board, it's easier to trace connections without the track disappearing under a component! But in your case, the tracks are pretty clear). Sometimes this will give you some ideas to make the board single-sided, even though it starts out very double-sided!

In your case, possibly the tracks in the coil/battery connector area, as well as under the big capacitors, could be moved to the bottom of the board. It always pays to keep tracks around big components that can go "bang" on the bottom of the board, so it's easier to troubleshoot, and if anything goes "bang", your tracks won't be damaged so badly. And again, if they're on the bottom of the board they can be traced more easily. That's just a tip from long experience!

I'd be pretty happy with your board. It's a great start.

Cheers,
Pete

[Pete the Builder]

Tinkerer, I'm sorry to hear your troubles - life can be really hard sometimes, usually not because of yourself! As a side note, it's always the little people who suffer most, and who must pay the price to sort out the problems. Always. Believe it or not, it's almost (but not quite) as bad in America. Yes, USA! They have ignored the infrastructure for so long, that it will take something like 30 years to fix the corroding power lines, the crumbling bridges and tunnels, and the urban roads. No, it's not like where you are, but it's the same sort of problem, for the same reason. The rich get richer with tax concessions, company tax waiving, and enormous payouts, and the people get - well, think of an inclined plane twisted into a helix...

Your life, like many here, is astonishing to those of us who live quiet lives in the bush. Just amazing. I hope you get to tell some tales, perhaps in the off-topic forum. I for one would very much like to hear anything you (and anyone reading) could be bothered to write about. The world is a small place, but like the Tardis, the stories about the people fill it far beyond capacity.

I hope you get back to where you can relax a little and buy cartons of poo tickets just so you can look at them. You know you're doing well when... heh heh heh. Hope this made you smile a little.

Best wishes,
Pete in quiet, comfortable, backwater Australia.

[mschmahl]

Hi all,

here is my first effort to make a PCB for the Tinkerer_SB PSU&TX.
It is for 2x6V batterie and 50-cm roundcoil. The schematic is from http://www.geotech1.com/forums/showt...677#post155677 with some changes that tinkerer discussed with me. I send the PDF with this changes.

IT IS A TESTBOARD WITHOUT WARRANTY OF FUNCTION!!!

And it is my first time to make a pcb. I have not respected any rules of construction a low noise rig, or other rules for making a proper pcb. I think it can be improved a lot, so all comments to make it better are welcome.

[sido]

Hi Tinkerer, wish you all the best with the setbacks so far and hard times that may follow you.

PM me or I WILL........as i want to do my best for a valued contributer to the Community here as yourself. I can sympathasize with your situation and i am very humbled with your honesty and want to contribute to such a worthy cause for your welcomed return to civility.

Get yourself back on track and we can all move forward from that.

I have many parts to offer, just not enough time ATM.

Regards Sid

[6666]

mschmahl
its all good thanks.