Burger PCB
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For my senior design project at UB, I'm building a hamburger vending machine. At the center of the build are custom PCBs - the brains that run the oven, freezer, conveyor belt, dispenser coils, and user interface. They're what make the whole thing run smoothly without a mess of loose wires or crazy compromises. The big wins with going custom are handling higher current and taking full control over the motor drivers. Bonus points come from simplifying the wiring and baking in better fail-safes for food safety. The board is built for this task exclusively, so there's no wasted space and no unnecessary parts. 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 was picking the right symbols for each component, like the motors and buck converters...