Tutorial: Ordering EAGLE Designed Circuit Boards

Tutorial: Ordering EAGLE Designed Circuit Boards(colinkarpfinger.com)

22 points by cfinger 15 years ago | 8 comments

I've had a lot of fun just drawing them myself on plain copper boards with fine-tipped sharpies. They sell little bottles of the etcher at some Radio Shacks but recently I've stepped up to ordering "Ammonium Persulfate" online and using a laser printer and an iron to make my designs.

I guess once you've monkeyed with that a while you might want to step up to something like this. It always seemed expensive and slow to me but I guess if you want to use little surface mount stuff you'd have to.

Seems like soldering it all together once you get the boards is the hard part in that scenario though.

suraj 15 years ago | |

SMD's are easy if you have tweezers, a magnifying glass and clean soldering iron. Take a look at this link http://www.infidigm.net/articles/solder/

cfinger 15 years ago | |

Back in the day I built a couple using sharpie and the radio shack etching solution. I did two using the laser printer transfer method as well. After doing a double sided board, it drove me nuts- you have to solder small wires for your vias. Once you order boards once you'll never go back- it just solves so many headaches and possible mess ups. Give it a try!

fuzzmeister 15 years ago |

While I expect it could take years to get to the level of being able to design an interesting IC, could anyone recommend some good online EE introductory material?

X-Istence 15 years ago | |

Take a look at the beginners offerings from http://parallax.com/. Stuff like the boe-bot and others. They will allow you to get your feet wet with electronics and circuit design.

After you have the basics down, you can start looking at the tutorials that SparkFun has for example to get some basic circuits out, and building them, learn how to solder (screwing up when you have 20 boards made is not that big of a deal, buy SparkFun's broken boards and play with them, I learned how to solder from my professor and have always had extremely neat boards).

Just take your time, and don't rush it. It is an absolutely blast to create your first circuit with an LED and blink it with a microcontroller.

The one thing I will mention is, get ready to decipher all kinds of data sheets to get the information you need so you don't accidentally burn up your electronic parts.

blacksmythe 15 years ago | | |

  >> so you don't accidentally burn up your electronic parts

The biggest thing to watch out for is incompatible voltage ranges (lots of parts are 3.3V compatible, most parts are not 5V compatible).

rikthevik 15 years ago | |

When you're getting started, most of what you're going to do is be hooking up a microcontroller to various inputs and outputs. I'm partial to the ATMega series by Atmel.

I've never used the Arduino, but I've heard tons of good things about them. When you're comfortable with your ability building circuits that aren't permanent, maybe look into a PCB.

ladyada 15 years ago |

also, http://www.ladyada.net/wiki/pcbchecklist (much less photogenic)