Fluke 8060A replacement LCD Display with PCB and LEDs

[paraboliclabs]

I created this KiCAD project almost 2 years ago, and worked on it intermittently for a few days out of the past two years. It's a PCB version of Dmitri's wonderful 8060A LED display modification. I never did get this manufactured, because I figured I messed up something somewhere and I was too scared at the time to get one made and try it out on one of my display-less 8060As. I originally thought I read someone (ogdento?) had replacement LCDs made, but could never find information on where/who to bug about them, so I decided to make this KiCAD project.

A short while ago, Dave uploaded a video about the prototype Fluke 87-VI and I commented about 8060A. Dave talked about the forum and the AmpHour episode with DrTaylor in his comment, and I totally forgot about this place! Shame on me. Anyway, I thought someone here would love to have a starting point. So I've uploaded it to the internet and am posting it here for anyone to finish it/look it over.

I'm willing to get some PCBs made and do all the R&D for physical spacing constraints + create a LED shaper/blocker 3D print and release it all for free. Though I would like people who are far more knowledgeable than I am to look over the design, raise some issues/complaints/ideas.

I am hoping the whole thing could exist as a sandwich of the PCB, 3D printed LED shaper/blocker, and a thin piece of Lexan. If memory serves me correctly, the original 8060A display sandwich should be around 4.05mm - 4.10mm thick. The standardish PCB thickness is around 1.6mm + a 1mm thick clear Lexan sheet, leaving around 2mm of 3D print space, so it could theoretically work.

It should be noted, the project used a trace smoothing plugin, and I'm not entirely sure what it was. Though the repository has backups of the project before smoothing was applied.

Edit: I just submitted a precursory order to PCBWAY and only had to change via drill size from 0.1mm to 0.2mm. I updated the repository with the changes and it should be produced asap. I should get them on Monday or so. I have the same LEDs and resistors that Dmitri used. Can't wait to test them out!

Anyways, Hope you're all doing well. 

https://github.com/SaxonRah/Fluke-8060A-LED-LCD

[paraboliclabs]

I forgot to add the schematic.

Edit: I edited the "Fluke_LCD_d2mm.kicad_pcb" by adding teardrops, cleaned up some traces, fixed one last via, and smoothed the traces with arcs. This is probably the best version so far. I'll work on un-smoothing/trace-arcing and un-tear-dropping this PCB in a few. It's easier to have a raw PCB with non-smoothed tracks and no teardrops, then applying one after the other once it's routing has been finalized. It seems sacrilegious to not have teardrops and smooth arcs for this, lol.

I had two questions from a chat I shared this with, figured I'd mention this information here too.

1. The smoothing tracks is done with Round Tracks plugin. It can be found in the KiCAD official repository in the Plugin and Content Manager.

2. Yes, I would be interested in doing this again with other Fluke Multimeters as well. If anyone has suggestions on which ones to do next, let me know. I do have a an extra 8024b I can start off with. If someone wants a specific LCD done, I would need very good LCD pictures angled in such a way I can see all layers in the LCD and it's connections. This is harder than you might think. The newly added combined.jpg shows what I mean by this. (didn't realize you could add attachments in a post modification)

[paraboliclabs]

I got the boards in today, and I hand soldered one. There are a few things I'd like to change.

• LED pads should be slightly bigger to accept being soldered better. You can get away with the small pads as they stand by tinning one pad, then taking the LED in one hand heating up the tinned pad and sliding the LED into position with tweezers, then finally soldering the other side.
• The 1.00mm pitch header is probably too small for most people to hand solder enamel wire to reliably. I believe there is enough space for a standard 2.54mm pitch 22 pin header. This would also allow for easier testing as well before you'd wire it up to the multimeter.
• The half digit is the only "odd man out" in terms of cathode direction. Both half digit LEDS can be flipped in the PCB editor to align cathode direction with all the others. All horizontal LEDS have the cathode on the left, and all but the half digit have the cathode on top.
• Refine kicad project to include BOM for pcbway assembly options.
• Add test points for easy continuity checking.

Pretty sure that's all. I'd also like to build and write a testing jig and test program for a pico/pico2 to run through all the digits and functions. That'd be nice.

I got some other projects that need finishing first, but I'll give the multimeter a test in a day or two with the newly soldered LED PCB.