Printed Circuit boards

[simonr]

OK, once the circuits been debuged and the PIC and other stuff does as it should, and all for less than a ten quid what do you mount it on. Veroboard's OK for testing.

But, for a nice professional finish you can beat a PCB, but at over £100! for one board (inc tooling maybe),it's a bit excessive. Fine if I want 10 or 20 of them but most work I do are "one offs". Just wondered what others do. Is there a cheaper solution?

[languer]

Simonr,

You can make the PWB (PCB) yourself. For "one offs" as you put it, is not a bad idea. There are plenty of methods to choose from, and plenty of information out there (milling, etching, etc.). The most popular is probably etching (chemically) and there are many different ways to make artwork, transfer it to the PCB and etch it.

The other way is to layout your board using a CAD program (expect many plugs for this one) and send it to be made. There is probably a CAD program for every living soul in the planet. It is amazing how these puppies just spring out of thin air. Anyway, you may have one or you may not. I am sure if you do not, many people will have recommendations. Just try out what best suits you (this is a good link http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/ECADList.html).

There are a few places that I would consider hobby-friendly (understand that I have only dealt with very few of them). They follow (all based on double-sided PCBs):

1)Olimex (http://www.olimex.com/pcb/index.html)
$26 / 6.3x3.9in_PCB, free tooling, free mask, free silk.
Very good deal, hope it stays that way. They panelize for free also. Add $8 for shipping (2 wks).

2)CustomPCB (http://www.custompcb.com/)
$38 / 4x5.5in_PCB (x2), free tooling.
They give you 2 PCBs for that same price. They will panelize for free too. Add $8 for shipping (4 days).

3)AP Circuits (http://www.apcircuits.com/)
$74.60 for the same as in CustomPCB.
They only ship FEDEX so add $20 (2 days).

4)ExpressPCB (http://www.expresspcb.com/)
$62 for 3.8x2.5in (x3), free shipping.
They give you 3 PCBs for that price. You can only use their software.

Of these, I have use 1, 3, and 4 with good results on all. If you can wait for delivery, Olimex is by far the better deal. I am sure there are many others out there but this is the only experience I have.

I guess my point is, making your protos into PCBs is not a great deal, probably a good investment. And you can always do it yourself if need be. I actually do not wire protos anymore (well, almost). I make the layout, transfer that artwork to PCB, and etch it. The additional time invested is not too great, but it really pays off when debugging messy wires.

Hope this helps.

[nedtron]

Greetings,

MG Chemicals and DATAK among others produce kits and materials for making printed circuit boards.

see: http://www.mgchemicals.com/techsupport/photo_faq.html

I have had very good results with both MG Chemicals snd DATAK products during the last 30+ years.

Thanks, Ned

[Desterline]

Other people have reported various degrees of success with this method, but it works fine for me.

http://www.fullnet.com/u/tomg/gooteepc.htm

BTW, I use Eagle Light to generate my artwork.

-Denny

[ANDY]

You certainly don't need to spend 100 pounds on a prototype PCB!

There are many companies that will do you a good prototype at a sensible price - I particularly like the ones that do a fixed price based solely on the size of the board, no mesing with number of holes and how many different sizes of hole, etc.

I've had good experience with both prototypes and small production quantities from PCB-Pool
http://www.pcb-pool.com/html_uk/uk_angebot_2.htm.

The quality is good and delivery has always been exactly as stated or sometimes even sooner.

And helpfully they take native format board files from many different PCB CAD programmes so you don't even need to convert to Gerber.

And best of all, if your boards are smaller than the 1dm2 minimum board area they will panelise them for you and charge for a single minimum size board. This is great if you're having really small boards made and will save you a fortune.

I have looked at some of the US based services but in most cases the delivery charge makes the total cost rather high. (I'm in the UK like you).

Other people have recommended Olimex and they have been supplying to e.g. members of the PICList for quite a while now - and piclisters are quick to discover and point out any problems so they may be worth trying too.

Hope this helps.

[johngb]

Suggest you try http://www.pcbtrain.com/
They may not be the cheapest but they do high quality job and deliver on time.

[ANDY]

Thanks for the link to PCB-Train.

They look pretty good, and their quantity pricing is very keen too.

And, even better, they include silkscreen on both sides - which very few companies will do in prototype quantities.

Cheers.

Andy.

[Squibcakes]

This is my method which works pretty well.

I had a demo version of circuit maker2000 pro sent to me for desiging the schematic and laying out the pcb.

Circuitmaker got bought out by protel DXP and they have a much updated version you can try for free. They will send you a demo cd but the trial only lasts for 30days. (You may find a patch for the trial on the net..if you know where)

I still use circuit maker as it is a lot easier to use.

Making PCBs is dead easy.. By blank copper cald boards and use Press and Peel Film. Just print straight onto the film usiong a laser printer - iron it onto the pcb, peel it off then etch it!

So much easier than using spray on riston, riston pcbs, UV lights and all that rubbish!

Give it a go.

[simonr]

Thanks to all who replied, have used pcb-pool with great results.
Thanks