diy pcb board

[3D0kassiah]

hey guys after seeing rdc designs (which are bad thanks for the influence)
i wanted t take a crack making my own pcb what i wanna start off with is simple
since im always messing with 12f683 pic's i wanna make a board where it just has the 8 traces that will connect to the pins
but at the same time if possible i wanna be able to push the pins all the way thru the holes to be able to reprogram them on the fly but still making contact to the traces
been messing with diptrace which is awesome but still dam complicated ( n00b remember  )

gonna draw something out and anyone that has knowledge please let me know your thoughts  good bad neutral how else am i gonna learn

thanks to rdc for the inspiration rodent and sethmods for the help when i had questions 

[Anonamous]

Eagle is a good program to start with. I have used it to make designs for xbox 360 nand flashers. You can get pretty good results with a laser printer, copper clad board and ferric chloride etching solution (you can get both the board and the etchant at radioshack)

[hyper999]

I use eagle, I learnt just by watching and reading every video, tutorial, and article I could find about eagle and PCB design in general.

I have moved on from making the boards at home and started having them made using oshpark.com the price is reasonable and the boards are very high quality.

My phone is currently in repair so I have no camera atm,  but when I get it back I intend to post some pictures of one of my recent projects which used a PCB made from this service.

[magic_man185]

There is also BatchPCB.com, which offers a similar service.  They are half the cost per square inch, but they charge a $10 setup fee per order.  Also, BatchPCB is in the US, they ship internationally but it is more expensive; I can't tell from the Oshpark website where they are located.  Hyper, BatchPCB has approximately a 3 week turnaround time, what is it like with Oshpark? Where do they ship from?

[Hazer]

PCBCart is a good place also. I have ordered from them three times. Usually in qty.

Their prices are:


10 boards dual-sided 3x4 inch are $6.50 each w/ $50 setup

or

10 boards dual-sided 1.5x1.5 inch for $4.64 each w/ $50 setup


But if you get 100:

100 boards 1.5 x 1.5 inch are $0.84 each w $50 setup

100 boards 3x4 inch are $2.00 each w $50 setup


They are manufacturing from Asia, but I receive my boards in three weeks.

[3D0kassiah]

thanks guys for the responses i was gonna try and do it myself as anon suggested but i remember sethmods telling me about batchpcb.com so ill try them out if not ill look into hypers suggestion also
so eagle seems to be the prime choice guess ill fire that up eagle and mess around with it
currently trying to use diptrace but ill try eagle see what kind of progress i can do

lmao keep in mind i am a n00b to this but dying to learn as much as i can
can someone tell me if im going in the right direction?

[hyper999]

I'm no expert but here we go,

- Your copper fill should be connected to ground and I would remove any islands in the middle

- Your R1 silkscreen is hanging off the edge of the board

- The pad connected to pin 4 looks very close to the trace below it, the minimum distance you can have will be specified by the manufacturer but generally as much clearance as you can afford is best



The key to creating PCBs in eagle is creating the schematic and getting the right footprints for your parts, before you lay anything on the PCB, also generally manufacturers will supply an eagle drc file if you run the design rule check with the file they provide loaded this should spot any errors where you have not left enough clearance etc.

[3D0kassiah]

thanks hyper for the feedback
well with the great help from sethmods
i ended up ditching diptrace and went with eagle instead and yes lmao that design i posted was total garbage well i did it drunk and with no prior knowledge of anything  dont think ima do that again

but sethmods was awesome enough to set up a team viewer session with mo and showed me what he knows
we got it figured out now 
but now    comes the process of making the board i checked out pcbbatch.com and they wanted 18$usd for one little board not sure if the setup fee applies to every rev if needed or its a one time thing forgot to ask him
the price per board was 2.50$ usd the site confirmed the design passed
unless this should only really be done with a huge order in mind not gonna spend 20 bucks for every board
or should i just do it myself like anon said?

[hyper999]

There is also BatchPCB.com, which offers a similar service.  They are half the cost per square inch, but they charge a $10 setup fee per order.  Also, BatchPCB is in the US, they ship internationally but it is more expensive; I can't tell from the Oshpark website where they are located.  Hyper, BatchPCB has approximately a 3 week turnaround time, what is it like with Oshpark? Where do they ship from?

osh park do 3 boards for $5 per sq. inch and they do free shipping to the US, They are located in US. Basically the service is ran by a guy called laen who takes all the boards panellizes them together then sends it to be made (US fab house), he then splits the panels and ships the boards.

I live in the uk and got my boards in 3 weeks so i'm guessing the shipping to US is a little quicker.

Also OSH Park have a very nifty website that drc's your board, shows you renderings of all the different layers and what the final board will look like when you get it and calculates the price before you order.

[SethMods]

Something that I noticed is that BatchPCB automatically selects Priority Mail when checking out.

I ran that same job and with First Class shipping it was
$10 Setup Fee
$.90 Shipping
$2.50 PCB

Total -> $13.40

OSH Park sounds cheaper (and faster), but I've never used them before.


Also, this is just for prototyping. When you get your design the way you want it, you can send off to a fab shop and get 100 made for around $60 or so.