Detailed Product Description

The prototype of the PWM motor controller was constructed on an IC proto board with parts and wires stuck into the holes of the proto board. One version of the finished circuit was used to make a variable speed DC fan, the fan was mounted on top of a small metal box and the PWM circuit was contained inside of the box.

A simple circuit board (see picture) was built using a free circuit board CAD program, PCB (1) that runs on the Linux operating system. The circuit board image was printed on a PostScript laser printer onto a mask transfer product called Techniks Press-n-Peel blue film (2). The printed on film is then ironed on to a cleaned piece of single sided copper clad board. The board is etched with Ferric Chloride solution. Holes are drilled with a fine gauge drill bit, parts are soldered in, and the board is wired to the power and load. This technique is great for producing working boards in a short time but is not suitable for making large numbers of boards. A board pattern is shown in Fig 3, this may be photo-copied onto a piece of press-n-peel blue film, or used in a photographic etching process.

Alternately, the dead-bug construction method may be used, this involves taking a piece of blank copper PC board, glueing a wire-wrap IC socket sideways to the board with 5 minute epoxy, then soldering all of the parts to the wire wrap pins. Grounded pins can be soldered directly to the copper board.