After-School Circuit Class: Soldering and Circuit Boards

Over the past few weeks, our after-school circuit class has been learning how to solder wire and how to solder components on a circuit boards. After a few sessions of practicing (soldering just wires together and soldering old resistors to old circuit boards), it was time to take their skills to a real, circuit board.

This was not going to be just a standard, cookie cutter board...they were going to make their own. We started by creating a schematic drawing of a simple circuit comprised of a battery, LED, switch and resistor. Next they were given the real parts and asked to make a working circuit on a bread board.

Next we taught them to use Fritzing, an online circuit board designing program. After that, it was time to mill their boards.

Using the OtherMill and single sided PCB blanks, we created their personalized circuit board. Because of time, students watched as we set-up the program, imported their files, arranged them on the PCB and started milling.

Once the boards were finished (it took longer than our class period so it was the next session when...) the students sat down to solder.

Creating the circuit board with the OtherMill

Ready to solder

Parts tubs ready to go

It's "Solder Time"!

As the first group was working, we realized that, while more practice is always needed, the design of the circuit board could be adjusted to make the soldering a little more successful. As you can see, the distance between the soldering points and the rest of the board is very close...this caused our still novice solderers to have issues with their circuit working.

So with the next batch of boards, we are milling away a little more of the copper. This will allow the students a little more space to makes mistakes as they fine tune their soldering skills.