Homebrew PCBs

Hi Ted, 

OK, I found it!  Quite impressive!  I wish I had the time (and knowledge)
for advanced RF projects. 

I enjoy the CAD work as well.  I've mostly used it for designing parts for
my steam engine models.

	http://www.hobbitengineering.com/

But now it's PCB time!  I do have a collection of parts for a PCB router,
I'd like to get that up and running.

I've got DeskPCB from IMService, and I'm experimenting with importing Gerber
files into it.  I suspect some of the parts I used (or made/altered) have
pads or outlines on the WRONG layer, as not everything is coming through
correctly!  More library work.  

I did find that by adding only a few lines (blocks) of Gcode, I could get
Vector CAD/CAM to backplot a Excellon file.  And I got rid of the offset,
thanks to a reply on this list!   

CUL8R,

Alan  KM6VV

> 
> Hi Alan,
> The SKN transceiver is "A 30 meter transceiver for Straight Key Night"
>  under the "Completed Projects" setion, 1st item listed. The direct
> link would be http://www.kx4om.com/Projects/SKNXCVR/30mxcvr.html.
> 
> The site may have been in flux when you looked.  I did some
> considerable re-writing of that page last night, changing the wording
> from a project description in progress, so the html code was flying
> back and forth from my laptop to the server, and the internal links
> were changing.
> 
> My latest frustration with Eagle is pad design, or lack of it.  I'm
> doing an RF amplifier circuit that has two MMICs in it for
> preamplification prior to the PA.  Of course, there are no library
> components for the Mini-Circuits MAR-6, or Agilent MSA-0386, etc,. so
> I had to design them.  The problem is, the spec for the two opposing
> ground pad sections (think 4-bladed ceiling fan; input, output, and 2
> grounds)are horizontally wide, rounded edges, with 8 through-holes to
> the bottom layer of the board, to distribute the capacitance to the
> ground plane.  The best I could do for the Package was to lay down the
> surface mount pads, and draw using the polygon tool on the outer 1/3
> of the two ground pads.  Now, after adding the part to the schematic,
> DRC on the board tells me I have a clearance problem between the
> ground pads and the rectangular polygons!  Duh...they're suppost to be
> connected, but as my questions from last week remain, Eagle expects
> one and one only "pad" connected to each pin.  Nothing else must touch.
> 
> As I told a friend in an e-mail earlier today, that's why I export my
> Eagle boards to Photoshop, so I can do anything I want to with them!
> 
> It's hard to imagine doing digital work without CAD, even at the DIL
> page level.  I actually do have a manual wire-wrap tool and a spool of
> wire, but I've never used it.  To tell you the truth, I'm not very
> good at perf-boad soldered lead construction, either.  I have a couple
> of basic problems: layout visualization (I keep running off the end of
> the board), and bending those leads and running wiring in a sane
> manner.  Doing "Ripup All" is so much easier!  I've done a little bit
> of "ugly" construction, and that's a very fast way to buid, and I've
> done a bit of Manhattan, which is kind of tedious to me.  Until I
> recently got back into homebrewing the last couple of years, most of
> my work involved drilling chassis and mounting tube sockets and
> terminal strips.  That's quite a gap in time from working with 6146
> beam power tetrodes to MMIC amplifiers the size of a piece of buckshot!
> 
> CUL,
> Ted