W12: strategy change
Successful attempts warrant celebration, while failure asks for a swift change in perspective. This is illustrated by this log of mine, where I describe in detail how the last design for a 3D printable PCB wasn't working well enough, and what I'm doing instead.
After managing to produce the third prototype for the electrochemical soldering machine, I noticed the method had too many drawbacks; now I'm working on something much simpler: using a low-melting alloy and air.
I've also made a 180ยบ turn (maybe not that much...) regarding my custom scripts for the same job. Rather than a full-stack solution involving a GUI and full G-code exporting capabilities (all of this already implemented), I'm now writing a script that simply pipes together KiCAD, OpenSCAD and Cura to get better capabilities. More details on this later! For now, I'm deciding whether to publish the previous tools, as they are incomplete but already useful in their current form...
I've also designed a mechanical device to control 16 axes with just two stepper motors. The design uses a corkscrew-shaped ramp and a shaft that just moves into and fits any of the axes. I've made a few tries with printing the pieces, but still not a working thing.
And, outside this project, I've already finished rewriting the Avogadro 2 graph code. I'm already planning changes further into the future, particularly with regards to connected group detection...