My First PCB
I designed and 3d printed a custom LED fidget box toy (shown above) for my nieces and nephews to play with when they visit. In a world of omnipresent screens there is something very tactile and extremely satisfying to toggle a switch on and off. The design is a shrunken and optimized version of the toggle boxes I previously made for the 2022 Philly Makerfaire. It’s a simple series circuit that runs off a 9V battery. The challenge comes with wiring and subsequently packing all the wiring and the battery into a very small enclosure. I decided it was time to try my hand at ordering a custom printed circuit board (PCB) that would make the assembly easier.
DIY PCB
After some cost comparison research I decided to order the custom PCB from JLCPCB. Anthropic’s Claude code linked to my Autodesk Fusion CAD software helped me layout the PCB board size to fit exactly into the enclosure of the fidget box. Claude Code also helped walk me through the ordering steps. I clicked purchase and two weeks later the PCBs magically arrived in the mail.
The custom PCB works!
Packing the PCB, battery and wires into the enclosure still makes for a very tight fit, but the setup and wiring was a breeze this time around with the PCB serving as the backbone of the fidget box toy. The next challenge is to machine a full enclosure for one of these out of shiny aluminum on my Tormach CNC machine. This is not a complex device, but this little experiment serves as an encouraging evolution step towards making more complex devices that run off PCBs integrated with a microprocessor and other electronic components that integrate and combine tactile switches with user feedback.