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Rendering of PDU and fresh pile of PCBs from Circuitmart |
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single channel of dual high-speed 12V solid state relay on breadboard |
Because these cards are small and parts count it large (4 diodes, 6 transistors, a driver IC, 7 resistors, 1 tant cap) I sourced ICs with the configs I needed inside of them pre-configured. You would be amazed what you can find at Digikey if you look hard enough. Anyway, I'd never used these ICs before so I was required to design the footprints for them and lay them all out and what not. Long story short (too late), I read the datasheet wrong for one of them and got some pins confused. I didn't notice this until I had it all built up and my beautiful square wave looked like this.
I began going through everything and I found the problem, but what to do? Well, run new wires of course!
I didn't have to do any drilling because I happened to have vias available so I just needed to cut some traces and thread some wire. I used an old length of stranded telephone wire. After stripping the outer shield, I removed one of the four insulated wires inside and stripped it down to its constituent 8 strands. I used two strands (twisted) for the short trace and one strand of the longer one. In order to raise the single strand's current capacity a bit, I wet the entire length of the strand with solder. This also stiffens it so it wont bend so easy.
My square waves have returned to me!