Burger PCB

For my senior design project at UB I'm developing a hamburger vending machine. Custom PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) are essential for a project like this, especially for automation and control systems.  

The biggest wins with custom PCBs in this project are handling high current for heaters and fully custom motor drivers. Bonus points come from reducing the size and complexity of wiring and better fail-safes for food safety compliance.

PCB schematic
 

I used KiCad for this project from start to finish, and found it really straightforward to use. There is a lot of documentation on the internet which made the learning process enjoyable, and going from concept to finished project only took a few hours. 

The trickiest part of making the schematic was determining which symbols were appropriate, as even motors and buck converters had many variations of wiring. I solved this by finding images from the part source (e.g. eBay, McMaster Carr, etc.), seeing what connections were needed, and then selecting the symbol in KiCad.

Assigning footprints in the schematic

PCB editor

Here, connections are drawn between components, both on the PCB and connected extraneously. The components to be placed on the PCB are in the upper left, being the buck converter, microcontroller, resistors, and motor drivers.

Gerber and drill files

Honestly, besides learning a new skill, my favorite part of this project was seeing the Gerber and drill files at the end. Knowing I could send these files to a PCB factory and find a circuit board with copper layers, pads, and holes in my mailbox was really cool.