Brads Electronic Projects Forum

Making your own Printed Circuit Boards yourself!.
Theres a few ways or methods out there for making your own PCB's at home and I just thought I would share some information for poeple who want to make there own PCB's for there projects!

The First thing you will need Is some kind of PCB making software:

Eagle- http://www.cadsoft.de/

Diptrace - http://www.diptrace.com/

Next thing your will need is a good Laser printer (I use a Samsung monochrome ML-1665) this is ONLY a BLACK laser printer. The cheapest way I would say to making PCB's is what is known as "Press and Peel" tutorial can be found here:
http://www.techniks.com/how_to.htm

Another way is the UV light and photoresist board way, which can be found here:
http://www.technologystudent.com/pcb/PCB3A.htm

UV light boxes are quite expensive at around £100. Your will also need Etching chemicals - where the excess copper is removed to leave the individual tracks or traces. And then your need a good fixed drill to drill your holes for the PCB connections:
So you could end up making boards like this? Single or double sided: If you got any Questions or need help then just ask and Ill try and help!

Very nice indeed bitfogav!

I was actually looking at doing a how to on youtube about etching PCB's - and your method is very similar to mine.

Good job!

I thought about using my inkjet printer to print directly onto the pcbs. I even purchased a second printer (used) just for the purpose but have not yet got around to trying it. The printer has to be capable of printing directly to a CD and of course you have to purchase different ink. Maximum board size is limited to the size of a CD (obviously).

Here is link showing how it's done.

http://www.fullspectrumengineering.com/tutorial.html

Stacy

brad wrote:Very nice indeed bitfogav!

I was actually looking at doing a how to on youtube about etching PCB's - and your method is very similar to mine.

Good job!

I really enjoy your youtube videos Brad!


Heres a tip for using Press N Peel to make PCBs:
To make the PnP sheet/sheets last as long as possible, print on a piece of plain paper, then cut out a piece of PnP to the right size and tape it onto the printout, dull side up, using scotch (clear) tape, or something close enough?.

Then print out your (pcb) design again by reloading your paper into the printer (obviously noting which direction/side your printer prints onto!) and then this time the pattern is printed onto the piece of PnP.

Setting your laser printer to its darkest setting will get more toner on there, which can help if you have adhesion problems, but in general with PnP I find it's not all that necessary.
I think its important to trim the edges of the PnP quite close to the edges of the pattern - during ironing, the free edges of the pattern will tend to warp and can cause adhesion problems with traces near the edge.

Have made numerous PCboards and found the PULSAR Toner Transfer paper very user friendly.
Experimented using some .006 traces with good sucess. NOT PIRATICAL IMO
For etching found 1 part Muratic acid to 2 parts Hydrogen Peroxide works very well and much cheaper than that icky brown stuff. With the Muratic acid/Hyd Peroxide mix you can see your progress.
If you buy some product from Pulsar you can get FREE copper Clad boards 1x or 2x.
As for software found EXPRESSPCB to be very friendly, short learning curve with good results.
To do a double sided board, use CUTE PDF printer download to mirro your design.

Thanks for the tips there MrDEB,

Making PCB's at home is certainly an art, and one that I have not mastered just yet...

Here is a link that was suggested to me.
Improved my pcboard designs.


http://www.alternatezone.com/electronic ... alRevA.pdf

downloaded DIPTRACE
will give it a try.
Looks easy enough.
Played with simple schematic
Now to figure out how to print only the bottom or top traces without the parts outline.

I always use the Preview symbol which opens up the preview window of your PCB, in here you can un-select the objects that you dont want to be visible, and then print out what you want

Getting the hang of it.
Is there a command to tell it to only do a 1x board or just do the routing myself?
The auto placement is not the best as well as the auto route.

Locating parts will take some getting used to.
Tried looking for a 18F4520 using the search binoculars but ?
Looks like a promising program as it will do gerber files where as express pcb won't.
I wonder if it as a schematic capture where a schematic can be pasted from say Paint?

It's a great program although I don't really like the auto route function.

I have always just routed them myself. apart from that, It is still the preferred PCB program

IMO most people are using EAGLE.
I tried on several occasions the EAGLE software and come away with the idea that
"I HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO THAN LEARN EAGLE"
DIPTRACE looks liker it works rather well.
Going to make a pattern of my PDB-40 (Pic Development Board using a 40 pin PIC)
Very similar to the Tap-28 and is pin for pin compatible for daughter boards but has more LEDs, no UART/I2C port headers (they are for a daughter board but thinking of adding a slide switch so one could use the ICSP for programing AND UART
here is a picture of my latest board
needs to be trimmed and finished drilling.

here is the file for my latest pIC developement board using a 40 pin pic.
Done in DIPTRACE. Schematic only as I havn't got to a board design yet.
well so much for that idea
What file format can I upload? from DIPTRACE

You need to first zip the file and then you can upload it.

Nice board you've designed by the way

here is my schematic and beginnings of my PCboard design.(new to DIPTRACE)