Breadboard power supply
The final power supply features two heat sinks for the voltage regulators, for extra flair.
Project description
For my first project in Electromechanical Systems & Robotics, I was tasked with designing a breadboard power supply in KiCAD. The power supply was required to take a 12V DC Barrel Jack input, and then convert it to 5V, and 3.3V outputs. This project was difficult because I had no prior experience in any PCB design software, nor did I have experience with circuits in general. I started by building a prototype of my circuit on a breadboard, before beginning to design the schematic in KiCAD. I spent a long time finding footprints for all of the components, and then laying them out neatly in 3D. After routing traces, my PCB was finished and I sent it off to the fabricator. I soldered the PCB myself at the Tufts’ Makerspace and it worked perfectly!
The power supply was prototyped on a breadboard so that I could learn the basics of the circuit before building it in CAD
I made sure to extensively label the PCB so that it would be easy to solder. The PCB also features a 12V passthrough to the green screw terminal.
The final power supply outputs 3.3V on one rail, as shown here. The other rail is supplied with 5V.
I spent a long time trying to get all of the traces on one side of the PCB, just to find out the next day that I could have used the bottom layer of the PCB as well. Hindsight is 20/20, I guess.