Homebrew PCBs

On 7/20/2014 10:36 PM, Harvey White madyn@... 
[Homebrew_PCBs] wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> Let me amplify this a little for those who have not considered the
> problem.
>
> 1) hand soldered boards with through holes generally want bigger pads
> 2) depending on your techniques, you may find that 10mil traces are as
> thin as you want to go, commercial can use 8 easily.
> 3) you're not likely to do plated through holes (you can, and some do,
> but not casually)....<snip>
> 4) solder mask and silk screen, not always found in home projects.
> 5) you're likely to do double sided boards at best at home, you can do
> more with a commercial house.
> 6) you can cut corners (and put things close to edges) where a
> commercial house may not.
>

Hello--

I'll add a couple of additional points:

--If you create a design for fabrication by a commercial board house
and thus plan to invest some money in the design, you're likely to put
more thought into the board's layout and testability than if you're
making a board at home.

--Any piece of equipment for homebrewing PC boards entails
costs for materials and modifications. About the cheapest
approach would be the toner-transfer paper and flatiron
method.

--Once you have a layout that you think might be satisfactory, you can
create a mockup by stuffing components through a 1:1-scale paper layout
that's superimposed on conductive foam.

--You can visually  troubleshoot the board's etch by copying the trace
and silkscreen layouts onto transparency film and stacking them together.
Use felt-tip marker pens to mark off traces after you've verified 
point-to-point
continuity.

I've been contemplating the whole make-boards-at-home process and I'm
getting closer to going the commercial route... unless I can think of 
additional
tasks for a router, laser engraver, and 3-D printer<g>.

73--

Brad  AA1IP

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