Because it seems to be so many types of solder out there, choosing which solder to purchase can be confusing.
When I started out in electronics I had no clue, so I just used whatever solder I could find. But did you know that solder is not only used for soldering electronics?
Actually, solder is also used for plumbing.
And the solder used for plumbing should definitely not be used for electronics as it contains acid!
By Ilja at de.wikipedia [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], from Wikimedia Commons
A Gerber viewer is a great tool to use before you submit a PCB design to fabrication. This way, you will see exactly what you are sending to the fab house and you might find potential problems that aren’t easily spotted in the layout editor.
It is always good to know a bit of PCB terminology. Here is a reference table with the most common words.
In this Gerber tutorial, I will teach you how to create the files you need for a 2-layer board using Cadsoft Eagle. After you have completed this tutorial you will have all the necessary files needed to send to most PCB manufacturers.
This tutorial is out of date. I have switched to KiCad, so I recommend the updated tutorial How to Create Gerber Files in KiCad.
Reading schematics is just a matter of recognizing the symbols and see how they connect.
A symbol usually represents a part. Except for the ground and VCC symbols which just means connection to supply power.
The lines between the symbols represents
Very few start drawing circuit schematic diagrams from scratch. You usually start with a picture of a circuit diagram that you found in a book or on the web somewhere.
Either you start with a complete circuit where you only need to do minor changes or you combine several smaller circuits into a larger one. For example, you take the reference circuit for a microcontroller and add a LED driver circuit to drive some LEDs and an amplifier circuit to drive a speaker.
The Gerber format is the file format you use when you want to get your PCB made. By creating Gerber files from your design, your design files can be viewed by all the manufacturers out there.
If you want to understand the basics of Gerber files you should know that they:
Here are 5 cool circuit ideas for your next project. It feels so good to make cool stuff. So here is some inspiration for you to start building your next project.
This is a project I did that was really cool to make.
Making a cheap PCB is easier than you think. Here is short summary of how to create your layout and a list of some PCB manufacturers that you can choose from to get your circuit board manufactured.
Here are some simple PCB design guidelines that can help you create better board layouts.
There are always limits to how big your board can be, how thin your traces can be and the smallest drill size you can use.
This is a PCB design tutorial that I designed as a simple way to learn how to create a PCB layout in Cadsoft Eagle.
PCB Design is extremely useful to know. It’s what will take you from knowing how to build simple circuits to being able to build advanced stuff like LCD screens, Quadcopters, etc.
What you need for this tutorial:
(If you want to use the same schematic as used in this PCB tutorial you can download the schematic here. You can also find three simple electronic circuits with schematics, board layout and Gerber files here.)
We start by opening our schematic diagram in Eagle. Click on the “Board” button (or choose “Switch to board” from the “File” menu) to create a board for this schematic.You can also use the command line for selecting commands.
Here is a list of 5 of the best electronic blogs that I have found on the web.
Instead of reading about violence, crime, and corruption in the “normal” news every morning, I use an RSS feed reader and read about cool electronic projects from blogs around the world.
I have compiled this list of online resources that offer free electronic circuits. The circuits include free schematics and many of them also include explanations on how the circuit works and pcb layout.
Before you send your board layout to PCB manufacturing, you should always check your board for errors.
There is a high chance of errors when you design a new board. And very often you don’t discover it before you have manufactured the circuit board and are trying to troubleshoot it.
If you’re able to remove all errors before you make the board, you’ll save a lot of time!
Many errors can be removed by making sure your schematic is correct.
When you’re sure your schematic is correct, there are a few other checks you should do to minimize the chances of any problems.
This is my step-by-step guide to schematic drawing in Eagle. Let us say we find the circuit above interesting and want to build a real electronic circuit out of it to test in the real world. The first step is