Routing complex surface mount circuits on a 1 or 2 layer PCB is tricky. TSSOP and similar small parts often don’t have enough clearance to route a trace between two leads. Mats tackled this by by removing a few unused leads. This gave him the freedom to route traces through the now available space where […]
Category Archives: PCBs
PCB a Week 3: Double sided breakout boards
Mats continues his challenge of designing one PCB every week. In week 3 he came up with a double sided breakout board containing footprints for 24 ICs on a 5cmx5cm board. Via the forum.
Why right angle bends on a PCB are not so bad
We’ve heard it numerous times: avoid using right angle bends in PCB routing. Here’s an article from EDN magazine explaining why it’s not as bad as most people think. The article explains that the “bad” effects like increased capacitance and circuit noise only start to be a pain for designers where signal speeds are above […]
DIY PCB tutorial
Jianyi Liu wrote a tutorial on PCB fabrication at home. He states, “A few years ago, I started experimenting with homemade prototype PCBs as an alternative to professionally fabricated PCBs from board manufacturing company. My company was flexible enough to give me some resources and time to explore the subject matter. What I discovered was […]
Silkscreen PCBs with vinyl stickers and toner transfer
Make DIY silkscreens using vinyl stickers, similar to making PCBs with toner transfer methods: Below I am going to detail the process of making the silkscreen, which is the side of the printed circuit board where we solder the electrical components. We will use the same method, vinyl sticker pcb.
Simple surface mount reflow process done at home
This video explains a simple reflow PCB assembly technique. The board is first prepped with solderpaste using a stencil. Then a manual pick and place machine populates the board. This is followed by a 5-6 minute cook in the reflow oven.
DIY Ferric Chloride etchant
Here is a guide on how to make your own Ferric Chloride etchant. It’s a relatively simple process that only requires some iron, hydrochloric acid, and air. As the process uses acids please be careful, and do this only if you feel comfortable with it. Get 20g of iron. This can be in the form […]
WARNING: Out of stock free PCBs will be removed from the drawer
We would like to warn anyone that ordered free PCBs, that are now out of stock, that they will soon be removed from our free PCB drawer. Download the documentation while the links are still available. Documentation will still be available on our wiki, but it might be more difficult to find. This comes as […]
DIY USB password generator
Benjamin Lunt writes to inform us of a small hardware HID project which for which he’s developed a PCB. The device design was created by Joonas Pihlajamaa (Jokkebk) and posted on CodeAndLife where it’s very popular. Joonas’ device is a small USB HID keyboard device that types a password stored in EEPROM every time it’s […]
Cost breakdown of Seeed’s PCB service
Mat has gone through the trouble of filling up a spreadsheet with the cost breakdown of Seeed’s PCB service. It seems that the boards with the lowest cost-to-area ratio are the 10cmx10cm ones that are ordered in quantities of 10. For higher quantities it quickly becomes apparent that the larger boards have a lower cost-to-area […]
Vusbtiny PCB
Arnar Ingason designed a cool PCB for the vusbtiny. He used circuits.io for the schematic and the PCB design. His design was based on a tutorial by Tino Göhlert. Via the contact form.
MSP430 board guest PCBs
Boseji from m8051 gave us these PCBs on the second day of the Bangalore geek tour. We added them to our free PCB drawer. The QFP package MSP430F5310 is a nice MSP430 chip that can be programmed and debugged using the MSP430 launchpad. They are presently under CC-BY-SA so you can go ahead if you […]
DIY electroplating and CNC milling PCBs
Here’s a video made by Cpirius of DIY electroplating and CNC milling of PCBs. The electroplating process he uses is good for down to 26mil vias. It looks like cpirius has made a video of his entire PCB prototyping process: Drilling holes, electroplating, mechanically etching and cutting out the board. Read more about the electroplating […]
UV lightbox for PCB making
Dieter Oelofse built this UV light box for making PCBs and wrote a detailed explanation describing the build. “I needed something that could illuminate a board from both the top and bottom simultaniously, in order to avoid complex re-allignment of the top and bottom layers in between exposures. Secondly, it need to fit on my […]
Box of new PCBs
A box of PCBs just arrived from Seeed Studio’s Fusion PCB service. This batch includes: ATX Breakout Board v1.3 Smoke Tester v1 Bus Pirate Demo Board v5c Logic Shrimp v2b ATX Breakout Board v1.3, Smoke Tester v1, Bus Pirate Demo Board v5c, and Logic Shrimp v2b are available now in the free PCB drawer.
PCB Visualizer – Free online PCB data verification service
PCB Visualizer is a free online PCB verification service. Basically you upload your gerbers, setup the design rule check (DRC), and you get a graphical representation of what your PCB will look like. It points out any problems that didn’t pass the DRC. Via Electronics Lab.
Box of new PCBs
A box of PCBs just arrived from Seeed Studio’s Fusion PCB service. This batch includes: Bus Pirate LCD Adapter v4b DP6037 PTH.v1 DP6037 protoboard.v1 DP6037 SMT.v1 Logic Boost 6 Channel Logic Analyzer FT230X_LTC4053 Breakout v1a FT230X_LTC4053 breakout v1a with proto-area FT311D (Android) breakout v1b All of these PCBs are available now in the free PCB […]
Flickering pumpkin LED designed in KiCAD
Add some LED goodness to this year’s Halloween pumpkins. This flickering LED design on a pumpkin shaped PCB was drawn up in KiCAD. Grab the design files from the low voltage labs site. It’s a simple schematic with just a switch, resistor, battery holder and 10mm LED. But makes for a nice easy project to […]
PCB manufacture using Oracal vinyl film + laser printer
Drones refers us to this short but informative video demonstrating the manufacture of PCBs using a laser printer and vinyl stickers. He notes that the video shows laser printed toner being 100% transferred to a PCB using Oracal brand 651 adhesive vinyl film which is relatively inexpensive and widely available from online distributors and and […]
Panelize 4 DP6037 standard PCBs on a single cheap PCB order
Schazamp is making a community order of Bus Pirate v4 Sick of Beige PCBs. He decided to use Seeed Studio’ss cheap PCB service and hack together 4 Bus Pirates on one 10x10cm PCB. He hit a little snag with combining the gerbers, but Ernie helped him out. Since the Bus Pirate uses our DP6037 standard PCB […]