This article will walk you through the steps on how we made the prototype for manufacturing, and my interactions with my manufacture firm, AQS-Inc.
For this project we decided to make a simple modular watch with Atmel 32-bit ATSAMD21G18A ARM.Microcontroller. This is the same chip that is used in Arduino M0.
For our device, we have 4 major components
- Injection molding casing
- Metal stamping casing
- Electronics: PCB + Screen + USB Jack + LiPo Battery ….
- Watch Band + Custom Cable
TinyCircuits just happen to have the design and features that we are looking for, thanks to them, we found the schematics form their website and convert the eagle file to Altium file.
Most PCB house take Gerber file that generated by software such as Altium. Not many PCB fab house take Eagle file, only a few that does..
Before we contact our manufacture to get a quotes and timeline, I have to make a few prototypes to make sure the PCBs would fit inside of the case nicely and it would friction lock in place.
Our plan is to link all watch module using custom connectors. LiPo battery and peripheral bard will be on different “box”.
For metal stamping we have two different tools, but it shares one of the tool for bending.
The tooling will only change on two sides, no need to make a completely different tool.
