pcb design for beginners?

Hello,

Are there any web sites you recommend for teaching someone (me) about pcb design or can you describe the process here?

What software is easy to learn for designing pcbs?

I know you can send your pcb design away and someone posts it back to you; which companies do you recommend for this?

If you tried to make your own pcb by etching or uv, how do you go about getting all the holes in the right places? Is it just a matter of being very patient and careful with a pillar drill? That sounds like a very monotonous job and the most tedious part of the process?

Thanks, Stephen.

Reply to
Stephen
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Need to have a mind to track things about other things.

Play this flow game...

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(sorry, if there was something else that had to be done today)

Reply to
Adrian C

In message , Stephen writes

You mentioned pillar drills, try and find a decent one, it saves a lot of time and broken drill bits.

I use acetates and a UV exposure box then etch them. Once etched the holes in the copper pads are easy to drill as they act as a guide for aligning the bit.

Reply to
Bill

Well of course the answer is, it depends. If you are using no ICs and no surface mount, and just wire ended bits, When I could see I used to do them manually, but there were even programs that ran on the ZX Spectrum for all of the stages of this back in the 80s, provided you could do the relevant photo production, and had an Mpillar drill under numerical control. It was a bit of a make do and mend life back then. However with the advent of surface mount and multi layer pcb design, its far outside the possibilities of home production.

Pass the Ferric Chloride someone! Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

Briefly: Design components (schematic symbol and PCB footprint) Draw schematic (using above and library components) Run electrical rules check (ERC) - look for mistakes (unconnected wires etc) Extract netlist (connectivity) and send to PCB editor Set up constraints (minimum track size, minimum distance from track to hole, track to track etc) Place components Route PCB (by hand usually better than autoroute) - turn straight-line 'airwires' into routed copper traces Run design rules check (don't violate any constraints) Fix the problems (perhaps make changes in schematic and update PCB) Export Gerber (artwork layers) and Excellon (drill files) Send to PCB fab (or make yourself)

Eagle is popular, but the UI takes a bit of getting used to. It's free for small boards.

Altium is nice, but it's a pro package with a pro price.

There's a variety of vaguely open source packages around that are probably fine for simpler PCBs, I've not tried them.

Every company and their dog seem to have a commercial PCB package: I'd suggest steering clear of the cheap and obscure ones. Generally the more popular packages have better support and more library components.

I've used PCBTrain, which are a bit more 'pro' than you might want. There's a collection of ultra-cheap send-it-to-china fabs such as:

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that look interesting, but I've not tried them.

I've used a CNC drilling machine. Hand drilling with a pillar drill is doable too - you usually have a pad which is a good target for the drill. The tricky bit is getting everything aligned if you have a double sided board (on a CNC I did the drilling first, and then used that as alignment).

Depending on the application, a surface mount only board may be worth a go. Surface mount is quicker to solder than through-hole IME. Or use as many SMD parts as you can to cut down the drill holes.

Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

This isn't a bad intro; comes with the free version of Eagle as I recall.

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Reply to
Bob Eager

I'd first ask just how complicated they're going to be - and if it's something you would enjoy, rather than just have, to do.

I actually enjoy the design stage from a schematic. Others may prefer crossword puzzles. So I can't help you with that.

I have the hole positions as part of the etching process and have a very decent but old PCB drill press. Using tungsten bits, you can drill all the holes very quickly.

The thing is that when using through hole stuff you're not going to be making vastly complicated things - if you were you'd go surface mount which in practice means factory made.

My stuff is generally single sided single layer - but I have made double sided at home.

I basically just use a cad prog with my own library of things I use often. DraftSight would be a free one that does much the same. You can do the layout on one layer, and the PCB on another.

The only other bit of special equipment I have is a heated etch tank with bubble pump. Cost under 100 quid.

But as I said, I enjoy the process. It's almost certainly not cost effective, other than as a hobby.

Here's an example:-

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Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

1) There seems to be an area at the lower right where some etching should have occurred, but didn't - WTF? 2) Also many areas not connected to each other or anything. In the context of the application, would that have mattered?

I etched a PCB for something in the 6th form, can't remember what, perhaps a bi-stable. All I recall is that I used a *shitload* of ferric chloride.

Reply to
Tim Streater

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No - it's correct. As designed. ;-)

No point in etching for a the sake of it. Just wastes etching fluid.

My trick is only to etch the minimum possible.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

So why are all those tracks shorted together?

The only concern is if you have low-signal or RF circuits, where floating tracks could pick up noise. Which may not matter in your application.

Good tip. In a PCB program you can use a 'polygon pour' to make a copper shape where all the other tracks are cut out of it. Assign that pour to a net (eg ground) to connect it as part of the circuit.

Surface mount isn't hard to do by hand BTW, it just means learning different techniques. Doesn't need fancy tools to begin with either, beyond a supply of flux.

Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

Can you explain what you are trying to achieve in that area?

It doesn't look right to me.

Reply to
Fredxxx

I've been having a look at low-cost/no-cost/freeware PCB design packages re cently. There are 3 that are widely used:

Eagle

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- free for small designs Kicad
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- fully free and open source DipTrace
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- free for small designs

There are others - but they have a smaller number of users.

I spent a fair bit of time evaluating both Kicad and DipTrace, and a lesser amount of time with Eagle.

I have in the past used a whole spectrum of packages professionally (includ ing the really high end stuff) - but haven't needed to do board design myse lf for a few years (instead working with a professional electronics enginee r when needed).

I would really strongly recommend DipTrace over the others.

I found Kicad to be 4 separate tools stitched together (and not that well) for schematic capture, back-annotation and footprint association, library p art design and PCB layout. It's necessary to be meticulously careful to fol low several non-intuitive steps in the correct order.

In my brief look at Eagle it seemed similar.

DipTrace OTOH is delightfully obvious in use, and I found that for all the common operations I could just try stuff - and it would do what I wanted fi rst time. I particularly liked the always-on mouse wheel zoom, and spacebar object rotation (wheel mouse, or any mouse, not essential - but nice).

For people familiar with a particular package, there's strong incentives to stick with the tools and a process they know - but if you're starting out

- go for DipTrace and work through their tutorial.

As far as PCB manufacturing goes, the only one I've used is PCBTrain (http: //pcbtrain.co.uk/) - and I've found them faultless. There's also a lot of i nfo about PCB design and manufacture (incl home manufacture) and CAD packag es, on their website.

Reply to
dom

Stephen used his keyboard to write :

It all really depends upon the complexity and density of the PCB's you intend to design. Single and double sided PCB's are possible DIY. You can get free software which autoroutes, take a look at Eagle. You need to be aware that autorouting may not always work and may need some help. The actual etching again, can be done, but needs some practice on simpler boards first.

Drilling poses no great problems, if you have the equiment to do it, because etching leaves a hole in the copper to act as a guide.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

Star grounds.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

It's simply too fiddly for my old eyes and hands. ;-)

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

How complex, how many layers, what size?

For small hobby based stuff, Fritzing is reasonable and I've used it to make many small PCBs, some for my own use, some to sell.

With Fristing - its schematic capture is rubbish. Essentially, it lets you take a design from breadboard to PCB. You'll see it used a lot on Arduino and now Raspberry Pi applications. They have their own prorotype service, but it's stupidly expensive.

So it's far from perfect, but the learning curve is not that steep at all.

Eagle is good too - but stupidly expensive for an individual who wants to make a small number of commercial boards. Free for hobby use though. Kicad is next on my list.

I gave up on home etching, drilling, etc. and just foot the cost for protptypes - not cheap at all, but for me its been more than worth it. I get a double sided board back in 5 days with solder mask, silkscreen, plated through, etc. and they fit as many of my boards on a panel as they can. e.g. this one:

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they got 8 on the panel and it cost me about £90. (I said it wasn't cheap, but my time costs more)

I use a different company for production who're much cheaper for bigger numbers, but also take longer - you pay for time more than anything else with PCB manufacture.

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is the prototyping place I use.

Gordon

Reply to
Gordon Henderson

Easy gave up after a 2000 score...

Reply to
tony sayer

The questions have been answered pretty well. I'll just look at a few outlier options occasionally useful.

30 mins in sunlight can expose photoresist pcb. The very simplest of boards can use paint as the etch resist, drawn freehand. Set your laser printer to densest and you can print onto acetate for use with photoresist board.

Finally pcb alternatives are occasionally useful, such as hard wired, ugly bug, manhattan etc. Even stripboard is adequate for simple stuff, and pads only board for slightly more complex through-hole stuff.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

With some through hole components you can bend the legs and treat them as surface mount components and do away with so many holes to drill.

PCBs using junk snail mail and a laser printer

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Software - try a free version of Eagle

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Tips for soldering surface mount components

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often the trick is lots of flux.

Reply to
alan

On a DIY job for home NEVER use lead free solder.

Reply to
alan

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