Designing your own printed circuit boards

[stereo coffee]

Designing your own printed circuit boards sounds formidable, but is not too hard at all.  Easy EDA offers such a service.

I cannot cover all the possibilities , rather below is a general outline. there are tutorials to help you with every step  https://easyeda.com/

 

Generally there are three steps

1. Draw your schematic, here is a example schematic, you can choose what parts you require by either choosing from standard parts on the left column called EElib, a lot of

   these parts focus on surface mount values, or you can choose from the main Library that has almost every part you can think of, there are

   many contributors adding peculiar parts each day, and there is an image of each part to assist.

 

  Drawing schematics, I like to turn the crosshairs off , you can join one part to the next using Wire which is in the right hand side upper box

  although sometimes requiring good hand mouse skills the join of wire should create a red dot for you indicating its successful. You can choose to

  use Easy EDA's online service for creating printed circuit boards,  or download for your operating system

 

2. Once you are happy with your schematic , you can then export it to a printed circuit board representation. Beginning this, your parts will appear detached from

   a purple outline of approximate size you need. If you are confident, try to make every part count to take up the available space, by risking reducing

   slightly the board outline size.  You will likely need to go backwards and forwards between your schematic and your printed circuit board, a good idea

  being to print off the schematic to refer to. You then carefully move each part around until you are happy with where it should be. There is a grid to help

  you align each part relative to the next. In the image I am about half way with placing components. You can add the same part or other parts at this point too

  noting it might be better to do this within your schematic, otherwise your schematic is out of sync, but the option is there to proceed. 

 

3. Once you have your board and parts laid out you can generate a gerber file. A gerber file is the file used to generate exactly what you designed. 

   You can choose then the pcb manufacturer of your choice for the quantity of boards you need. There is a Easy EDA  in house pcb manufacturing

   ability attached to the program where you are availed pricing and delivery options. 

 

The end result is a professional presentation printed circuit board, enjoy ! 

 

 

 

 

[RoHo]

Gee, things have changed a bit since I last made a PCB!  Masking tape, scalpels and ferric chloride baths.  Those were the days  

[rockeater]

2 hours ago, RoHo said:

Gee, things have changed a bit since I last made a PCB!  Masking tape, scalpels and ferric chloride baths.  Those were the days

For the circuit above, the old method would still be quite adequate. But if you were doing something with high density and large scale integration ICs, you'd indeed be in trouble with the scalpel and masking tape.

 

Thanks S.C. for this.

I am now embarking on a project of copying Wadia input/output board for there are a lot of them out there for sale in their "basic" version without in/out board.

This was a $2000 option and is a reasonably simple board.

Edited October 1, 2021 by rockeater

[bob_m_54]

2 hours ago, RoHo said:

Gee, things have changed a bit since I last made a PCB!  Masking tape, scalpels and ferric chloride baths.  Those were the days  

Certain felt pens could be used to mask boards prior to etching. But some were better than others.

 

I once (around 1990) reproduced an audio digitiser by photocopying the cct board removed from a working device, cleaning up The photocopy, using white out and black felt pens, then photocopying the cleaned up copy onto a clear overhead projector sheet. I then used this to mask a board coated with photo resist. And then etch the board in ferric chloride. It worked very well, and I was able to populate the board, and produce a working digitizer.

[Beeza]

Back in the day I designed low production D/S boards using grid paper, pencil and eraser to do the draft. When I was happy with the design I'd lay it out on a transparent with Bishops Graphics, UV light and ferric chloride - what a mess. Used Bob Barnes for larger runs.

These days I throw it together with Target3001 and email the files to PCBWAY.


 

[PonyTail]

An alternative is Kicad, widely supported and free. World wide library support from users, unlike protel/altium that comes with almost NO usable libraries and costs kilo-bucks, with ongoing $1K+ annual fees for bug fixes ! Yep, ya guessed it, I am not a fan.

 

It is a long way from Bishop Graphics + pin registration system, of which mine have degraded over time, getting 2:1 negatives made and using KPR3 (Kodac Photoresist #3) to coat and photo etch PCBs at home.

 

A friend of mine in the Hydraulics industry with no PCB experience learnt Kicad in one weekend and produced a SMD/leaded small pcb in one weekend ! Try and do that with Altium as a first time user!