Personal tasks of this week:
Task: Trade Studies on PCB Manufacturing/Assembly
Definition: There were many considerations in choosing a PCB Manufacturing/Assembly company to manufacture our product. This includes quality, turnaround time, ability to assemble the PCB components, and cost. We considered the following companies: JLCPCB, PCBWay, OshPark, and Colorado PCB Assembly.
Completion: The task is completed. From our trade study, we were able to determine that PCBWay was the best manufacturer for us. This is because PCBWay generally has good quality, has the ability to both PCB manufacturing and Assembly together, has turnaround + shipping in approximately a week, and offers large discounts if the Assembly service is used. In fact, we found that if the Assembly service is used, the price is actually cheaper than buying a stencil and manually reflowing it ourselves, which can introduce a source of error. Some reasons why we didn’t pick the other companies are as follows: JLCPCB has poor quality, OshPark can only manufacture the PCBs, and Colorado PCB Assembly, while with very high quality and fast turnaround, only offers assembly. While it is possible to combine multiple options, we thought that with the component sourcing to different parts, as well as PCB shipping from the PCB manufacturer to the Assembly, back to us would be worse both logistically and for our schedule.
Task: Preliminary Design for Optimization Prototype
Definition: To ensure that we are able to complete the final prototype of the analog optimization circuit, a smaller, proof-of-concept prototype must be made in order to ensure that our approach is sound.
Completion: The task is completed. Looking through Sergey’s Thesis, we found that there is a schematic provided for a simple 2-variable equality constraint, a 2-variable inequality constraint, and a cost function constraint (which is just a series of resistors) that we can use as our basis for our preliminary prototype. However, the problem is only for a 2-variable equality constraint. We decided to make a slightly more complex design and make the simplest possible optimization circuit with one equality constraint, one inequality constraint, and one cost function.
Next Steps:
The next steps are to use the tools selected to create a prototype of our simple optimization problem, as detailed in Sergey’s thesis as a proof of concept, then Once the baseline works, we will begin expanding that into creating our first prototype analog circuit that specifically models our double pendulum swingup optimization problem. Once that is done, we will order using PCBway.
Overall progress assessment:
My progress is on-schedule, as all of my tasks this week have been completed.