This will be great!
This week we had to make a programmer. In order to do this, we had to mill out the PCB, which is composed of copper and epoxy glass. After that, we had to solder on all of the different components (I learned that this is called "stuffing" the board). Finally, we had to program the programmer with another programmer.
Directly after learning how to use the mill, 3 of my group mates all decided to stay late and finish milling the boards. It was exciting as we worked together to make sure we followed all of the steps and didn't break anything. Surprisingly, it didn't take that long for us to get the hang of it, and finish milling all 4 of the boards. Afterwards, the soldering was not difficult for me, as I spent all summer soldering mm-scale wearable devices. Although the capacitors in this class are small, this summer it was literally impossible to find a capacitor if it wasn't under the microscope. So I felt well equipped for this step.
Sadly the programming was not as easy for me!! :( I was unable to download all of the software I needed (specificall avrdude) because apparently it is super difficult to do on Windows. So after spending a lot of time trying to figure it out, I ended up having to go to the lab computers to program the machine. In the end it worked out, and my board is done!