DIY 10" sunlight readable plotter

[BellaX]

Hi all,

in the meanwhile I have spent two days in the maker-space to populate 10 pcbs. Phew, a lot of work!
Together with a friend i set up the pick and place machine to place all the small components like
resistors and capacitors.

But we have 74 different parts and unfortunately a lot of them can not be placed by the machine
because we don´t have all of them on reel. (too expensive for us) This means we had to put around
500 parts by hand. 

Some insights from the 'production':

Solder paste printing:


Pick and place:


There were some fixes from the first prototype like mixed up LVDS signals, resistor value changes
and some small improvements but i have changed the battery backup switcher completely without
further testing. So I was a little bit nervous during bring up. 

But the end of the story is: everything is working like expected! I didn´t found any problems. 

The enclosure is another construction site. I have milled an enclosure from a wooden 25 mm MDF sheet.
After sanding and spray painting with MDF isolation filler and top coat it looks good. But this is a lot of
work and does not work for more than a proof of concept.

Currently I am looking for polyurethane foam like Ureol with density of 0.65 g/ccm. This material
should be much better for this project.

Here are some pictures from the prototype:

My little workshop:


MDF front:


After spray painting and installing the pcbs and cables it looks very cool and nobody
believes me it is made from wood:

[/url][url=https://share-your-photo.com/30e2a9e4d9]

These are the main functions the board provides:




The membrane for the keyboard is made of Trotec 'TroLase', a 0.2 mm film with black core
and white topcoat that can be lasered away easily. A python script scans the pushbuttons and
sends the keyboard inputs to OpenCPN. 



Some work to do:
- rear plate
- sealings
- holder for my boat
- NMEA pcb testing
- GPS board needs assembly and testing
- IR remote control testing

Cheers,
Chris