October 19, 2005
Making and cutting your own PCBs
For my research project I recently ended up designing some small printed circuit boards. Here's my advice on making your own PCBs on a tight budget:
- Used the free EAGLE layout editor to design the boards.
- The gbtiler perl script (free from sourceforge) can tile (step and repeat) multiple board designs in Gerber format onto one larger board.
- Pentalogix ViewMate is a great free Gerber file viewer to verify your designs in a 3rd party app before sending them out - double-checking made me realize that my bottom trace layers were mirrored.
- Advanced ciruits has a $33 per board manufacturing deal (up to 60 square inches, 2 layers+soldermask+silkscreen). Normally, the minimum order is 3 boards at that price, but as a student you can order a single board. If you have multiple parts, there's a $50 surcharge - but it's still a sweet deal. Turnaround time is 5 days on student orders.
- To cut your multi-part board into individual components, I recommend using an office guillotine (as described here). Stanford's PRL will not let you cut fiberglass board on a band saw - not sure whether the reason is concern for the blade, or the danger of the created particles... I also separated boards with a Dremel and a hacksaw, and the guillotine is by far the fastest way.