GROUND plane or nor GROUND plane

[Melanie]

I support Ioannis on this one... I put via's linking Ground planes on a 5mm grid spacing (at frequencies 50MHz to 2.5GHz) and at 3mm above that. Doesn't mean your circuit isn't going to work if you don't... just different approaches and points of view. You don't have to do this for your entire board... just the RF sections.

[duncan303]

There is a book I have which is a very usefull basis for helping to understand ground planes amonst other things. It is written in very simple language well worth having as a reference book.

Henry W. Ott. Noise Reduction Techniques in Electronic Systems . its old and should be in every college library, if not snap up a second hand copy will only cost you the price of a beer

Placement and sizeing of ground planes and vias can get quite fancy, especially with multilayer boards, You can't just slap one on either side, it can do much much more harm than good, on a simple double sided board one only has to consider problems created by orphans (areas isolated by components).

Take a look also at ground planes around external timing crystals and "rings" you may get some extra marks.

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[Acetronics2]

Hi,

I ALWAYS use Ground planes ... reason is very simple :

it uses MUCH less perchlorate or persulfate for engraving ...

Surprised ???

Alain

[duncan303]

Hi,
it uses MUCH less perchlorate or persulfate for engraving ...
Alain

and therefore [b]much[b/] more plating solution....

[Acetronics2]

And ... as plating thickness is much less than copper thickness ...

in the End ...

Alain

[duncan303]

And ... as plating thickness is much less than copper thickness ...

in the End ...

Alain

in the End ... depends on copper um/cost of etchant vs plating um/cost of solution

AND.... shelf lives of each solutions.....



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[xnihilo]

It helped a lot Now I still don't know if my ground plane on the bottom side is fine or not (i removed the top layer ground plane). there's a program called EAGLE that creates the plane once you draw a polygon and name it like the ground on the board. Does it do it right or not? Hell if I know.

A snapshot of the boards (when there were still a ground plane on both layers)
http://users.edpnet.be/charlesetchri...0kit%20pcb.jpg

By the way: I'm not using any RF device and my pic runs at 8MHz, 5V.