(DiscFerret): First prototype built, photos available!

Hi guys, The parts for my soldering iron finally arrived this morning, thus I spent the day playing with solder paste and SMD stencils. I've got one working DiscFerret built on a 0J28 board, using the same 2C8 FPGA and Cypress RAM chip I used on the previous two prototypes. The key difference here is that this unit is RoHS-compliant, built entirely with lead-free parts, and was assembled using a modified Argos mini-oven. The extent of the modifications? I installed an eCAL E6C PID controller and a Crydom EZ480F18 solid state relay. After a few hours spent reading the "concise operator's manual" for the PID controller, I finally got the Kester Pb-free and SnPb profiles loaded, and the thing is as happy as a pig in muck! (Oh, it turns out Multicore RA15 and 318LF work fine with the Kester profiles... for anyone who cares). Here's the Hardware Overview I've just written: http://www.discferret.com/hardware/ And, for the impatient, here's the 1280x712 photo of the very first DiscFerret: http://www.discferret.com/hardware/discferret_pcb.jpg This board has been allocated the serial number "GB0K1801", which decodes as: GB: "Great Britain", i.e. "Made in England," of course :) 0: 0 years after 2010 K: 11th month, i.e. November 18: 18th day of the month 01: First unit built on that day The plan is to clear out my stocks of 2C8 FPGAs, which should (in theory!) leave me with six saleable units in total, based on the stock of parts I have available. Tomorrow should be fun. It took me four hours to make this one board. If I can scrape together enough table space, I should be able to paste-and-place three or four boards at the same time, then oven-bake them in turn (which takes 5-10 minutes a piece). The fun part is, as always, clearing up all the solder bridges :( -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/