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Re:The Art and Science of PCB Design by dekhn on Saturday December 30, 2023 @12:41PM (#38816975)
I spent part of yesterday looking over Winnie's projects and was amazed. I continue to be blown away at the productivity of MIT students and their ability to make fun things (I'm thinking of the various high power LED projects, as I work with high power LEDss). I especially enjoyed reading about designing, simulating, and manufacturing a single-layer Aluminum PCB which acted as the substrate for the LEDs, but was impossibly hard to solder because it was a huge heat sink! And the solution to pre-heat the board with a board heater worked.

Please continue to post the projects, especially the git repos with the actual designs, as well as the reports.

Re:The Art and Science of PCB Design by wszeto on Saturday December 30, 2023 @10:22PM (#38821446)
Thank you :) LEDs are how I got into electronics-- they were a great way for me to burn crazy amounts of power when I was learning power electronics.

I'll continue to post projects since most of my learning happens when I make something that works... or more often doesn't work. I don't see a world where I can stop since there's so much to learn and explore. Currently I'm working on a ~100W LED driver that works off AC mains and it's really pushed me to be thoughtful and intentional with all the testing I do. It's my first project where I pull power straight off the wall, and it's both exciting and terrifying.

Re:The Art and Science of PCB Design by dekhn on Tuesday January 02, 2024 @07:55PM (#38849344)
I didn't really understand the motivation for a 100W LED that runs off AC mains. As for AC, I am generally quite scared by it but my very first maker project, some 40 years ago, was a nightlight, that every kid made in shop class (it's a resin-encased vacuum fluorescent light and a resistor connected to AC blades!) And I also played with vacuum tubes, converting AC to DC on a protoboard. After a bit I decided to stop doing that, as it's a true shock hazard./