Progress and Setbacks

Yesterday I worked on the electronics and finished a number of components. I finished soldering the 6 limit switches though I only connectorized 2 of them as it is a pain to do without a crimper and mine is currently at one of our clients site. I then attacked the soldering of a PWM board and a stepper driver board. I did the PWM board first and it went great until I realized that I had put a diode in backward. Took me nearly half an hour to figure out how to get the diode out without cutting the leads (since I cut the leads before noticing). One thing I would change on the parts listing tools and BOMs is to have a "buy spares" button or something to order 1 or a few of most of the components so that there is a spare if you manage to ruin a component, I spent alot of time worrying about messing up a single resistor or connector simply because of the pain of having to wait for a single component to come in the mail. The stepper driver was relativley easy to do once I figured out some soldering issues (keep those tips clean!).

Either way, at the end of the day I had a PWM and stepper board all soldered and ready to go but I realized I had left the arduino and power supply at home (I do all soldering at my office). I went home and starting following the instructions for hacking an ATX power supply when I noticed that the wires were not the correct colors. I did some digging around and discovered that since the machine I had cannibalized for the power supply was a Dell, the power supply is a mutant and proprietary offshoot of the ATX standard designed to make upgrading as painful and difficult as possible. I spent a while trying to figure out how to force the power supply to turn on but I couldn't find anything too helpful. I tried plugging in a HDD to simulate a load but that didn't seem to work. So I am going to beg people at the office for an unused power supply and try a standard ATX supply. Until then I can't test my boards to see if they work and i'm hesitant to make another stepper board without checking the one I have now for problems.