Showing posts with label PCB Homemade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PCB Homemade. Show all posts

Thursday, January 23, 2020

How to make a double sided ultraviolet exposure box for making PCB

I had a broken Samsung MM-N6 audio system and so I've decided to build myself a double sided UV exposure box using it's front panel since it already had an LCD display, buttons and a sliding motorized panel. The sliding panel can be replaced with a door.

How to make a double sided ultraviolet exposure box for making PCB 1

Here is an overview video with the version 1 of the box. This article presents an improved version of this box.



Friday, July 6, 2018

How to tin your PCB using plumber's paste | Homemade PCB

The last step in making your own printed circuit board (PCB) is tinning. Tinning is important because copper oxidize very fast, leading to an ugly look, hard to solder pads and over longer time, breaks in traces.

When you order PCB's from a manufacturer, the pads look all nice a shiny. I was looking for a way to achieve this at home and I found one. It doesn't involve strong chemicals, it's cheap and it only takes a few minutes.


Example of homemade PCB tinning
Example of homemade PCB tinning

DIY PCB tinning at home using plumber's paste
PCB after tinning

PCB before tinning

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

How to make a double sided printed circuit board (PCB) at home

Homemade PCB - not as hard as you might think. Ordering the PCB from a manufacturer might be easier but the disadvantage is the long waiting time, and in case you made a mistake in board design you need to repeat the process again.

For prototyping or for a one board spin, it is more practical and economical to make the boards at home. Following this tutorial you will be able to make a nice board in just a few minutes. The tutorial looks long because of the explanations, but once you get experience it's an easy task.

STEP 1: Printing circuit diagram

You will need a laser printer for this. The toner in the laser printer has plastic particles that will melt and stick to the copper clad. The sole purpose of the toner is to protect the copper below it from the ferric chloride. I use Brother HL-1210WE laser printer.


Printed electrical circuit diagram



The circuit diagram is created using DipTrace. I find it much easier to use than Eagle. You can print directly from DipTrace but i prefer exporting top, bottom and silk layers to .png files with 600 dpi density, and then arrange them on a A4 project to be printed on a single A4 paper. For this you need an image editor like Gimp, Inkscape, etc. I use Inkscape and it's free. The project in the image editor must have the same DPI as the exported images from the PCB design software. Also the printer must be set to print with the same DPI and everything will have the correct scale.

For aligning the layers i print the board dimensions (see image above) and use the lines at the corners to align the two layers on the light projector.

Only the top layers must be mirrored. I do this in DipTrace when exporting the image but it can be done in the image editor to.