Trimming Propeller proto board?

Franklin · 2011-07-21 20:51

How much can I trim off a non usb propeller proto board without breaking the circuits?Ineed to make it smaller and can't see spending $50 for the prop stick. Thanks.

WBA Consulting · 2011-07-21 21:45

You can actualy trim it all the way down to 1.2" square as long as you provide the power supply and connections for programming. See attached. Also, see the link to my $20 M44D40+ module in my signature. It is the full basic prop circuit in a DIP40 formfactor.

idbruce · 2011-07-21 22:48

Franklin

You may also want to view this thread
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?131959-Protoboards-Electrical-Noise-Ground-Planes-ETC...&p=1004314#post1004314

@WBA Consulting - I would have never guessed that it could be trimmed down that far, although I suppose a close inspection of the gerbers and schematic would have shown just how far a board could be trimmed.

Bruce

WBA Consulting · 2011-07-21 23:11

idbruce: Yes, it was designed with the main circuit isolated from everything else, so hacking it down works beautifully. Also, I take no credit for the research in determining that it could be. Oldbitcollector had it posted somewhere years ago. I only take credit for the graphic I made when I was determining how to cram an entire setup into a tiny enclosure.

Mike Cook · 2011-07-22 07:03

Have a look here:

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?101090-Smaller-than-Nano

Jim Fouch · 2011-07-22 09:00

I could see taking the time to write a program for my CNC that would do this.

If anyone would be interested in having me do this as a service, let me know. I'm sure I could get it to a point that it takes less than a minute to cut a board perfect every time. Even have the option to leave some of the prototyping area intact.

CannibalRobotics · 2011-07-22 09:10

I had to trim one down about 1/4" to fit into a rail mount chasis. I just pressed it down on a peice of plywood and ran it past my band saw.
A little barbaric but at the end of the day, it worked great and only took about 30 seconds.

Cluso99 · 2011-07-22 16:31

I have ordered initial qties of my 1"x1" CpuBlade and they should be back in 2-3 weeks.

WBA Consulting · 2011-07-23 14:03

Mike, thanks for the link! I got word of it from OBC a long time ago, but it appears he may have gotten it from you!

WBA Consulting · 2011-07-23 23:41

I just finished trimming a proto board for a project I am working on called "Svara". The attached drawing shows a portion of the desired part stackup inside a Polycase WC-20 NEMA enclosure. I decided on a proto board instead of my M44D40+ module because I wanted some extra proto space and didn't want to have to add some proto board to my module. Trimming down a proto board resolves my pickiness.

I created a 1:1 layout in Visio using the WC-20 Drawing PDF and some boxes set for the size of the PCB, Sparkfun LiPo battery pack, and the uOLED Display sold by Parallax. What's not seen in the stackup is the XBee, battery charging board, and tilt switch that will also be crammed in this enclosure. The gap between the PCB and the top and left of the case is for the XBee and wire travel.

I then cutout the layout that was printed on paper, taped it to the board, then started trimming it down.

I used a nibbling tool plus made some design changes while trimming, so the finished size is different from the drawing:

And it fits very nicely into the WC-20 enclosure as intended:

Now my Svara project can continue to the next step: Fit Test of all components. Gonna play Tetris for a bit to get ready for that.........

idbruce · 2011-07-23 23:52

@Andrew

Thanks for the link to Polycase, that is a nice link to have

Bruce

Trimming Propeller proto board?

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