Where to get PCB's made
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I also use ExpressPCB's mini-board service. Best deal I've found next to BatchPCB. Their drawing software is simple and easy to use. That way you don't have to use something like EAGLE to generate Gerber files. Most of the PCB software for that has a pretty steep learning curve. BatchPCB requires Gerber files.
It's a lot more difficult to make two sided DIY boards compared to single sided ones, at least I haven't mastered it. For me, it's worth the expense to pay for manufacturing.
That is so clean! I've tried the inkjet on a transparency and the laserjet thermal transfer, but I've never had trace edges that look anything like that. What's your secret?
You and me both. If I can get 1 out of 3 vias to line up I'm doing good and the through plating that I can't do makes the finished project look so much more professional.
I saw some clear electrostatic inkjet film on amazon that looked like it might be the ticket. Being able to pull it off for repositioning seems like the cat's meow. I'm going to give it one more try. Now where are my nasty chemicals...
Drilling is another problem if you don't happen to have the cnc setup. Drilling a two sided board without tearing up some pads has proven to be quite difficult for me. The phenolic dulls my bits sooooo fast. I need to find some tiny carbides.
No secret really I use h202 and muratic acid to etch with. It is slower but works well. other then that some good photo paper helps the stuff I use, I get 100% transfer with.
Trick to double sided boards is have a small via in two of the corners across for each other. Print your layout on regular paper non mirrored, tape it to the board and then take a # 60 drill and drill the two holes in the board. Now you need at least 2 #60 drills. When you print out the photo paper poke a needle threw the center of the vias on the paper , Put your #60 drills threw the paper and into the holes you drilled in the board. Iron that joker on really good. Go at least 2 or 3 minutes ironing everywhere you can. Then you can pull the drills out and iron the spots around them. Then flip the board and print out the back layout and repeat what you did on the first side using the vias and drill bits as a guide. My boards always come out dead on doing it like this.
With a board as small as bstedh is doing i would do at least two at one time to give enough room for the iron when transferring the toner. might even have to go with 4 at one time. Then after the etch you can cut them to size.
I use a small drill press table top drill press. If your not careful you can mess up the other side if the drill bit wanders. I use a magnified visor and lots of light. Also making fat vias helps also.
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You are an artist Java_Az. I've never seen DIY boards that nice. I thought they were manufactured first time I saw a photo of one. Doesn't surprise me you can do the double sided ones just as proficiently.
I have enough trouble doing a single sided board. A two sided board would really give me fits.
For me, the biggest drag about DIY is the drilling. The hardened steel bits don't stay sharp that long on the phenolic. They always wander to some extent on me and then they don't go through perfectly straight.
I have enough trouble doing a single sided board. A two sided board would really give me fits.
For me, the biggest drag about DIY is the drilling. The hardened steel bits don't stay sharp that long on the phenolic. They always wander to some extent on me and then they don't go through perfectly straight.
******* 3 10 296-6502-1-ND IC OSC MONO TIMING 500KHZ 8-SOP *****
Pretty sure your layout is using a 8-SOIC (0.154", 3.90mm Width) not the 8-SOIC (0.209", 5.30mm Width) which is a wider chip.
The Digikey part # for the 8-SOIC (0.154", 3.90mm Width) is 296-16792-ND
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=296-16792-ND
Can get confusing same package name but different sized chips. I learned that one the hard way. On the plus side the smaller chip is 1 cent cheaper
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Thanks Craig ,
Yeah i am pretty happy with how the boards come out. Even have the solder mask going now got most of the bugs worked out of that. Now if i can only get my mod finished one of these days. Doing a total rework right now found a few parts that are going to let me chop a 1/2" off the total length.
I just use some cheap drill bits i get at harbor freight for the boards. They just added some small metric drill bit kits there that are pretty cheap recently. It comes easy to me but i was a machinist out of high school used to make space shuttle parts and parts for the f-14 tomcat. I guess the best advise for drilling would be not to hold the part tight. when you come down with the drill and it hits the via it will center the board itself as long as you dont have a tight grip on the board.
So how to you deal with electrical contact through the vias? They're simply plated through on the manufactured ones. I don't see you would do anything like that on the bench.
I use a 24 gauge pre tinned solid wire and solder it into the board for signal. If i have something thats going to be running some amps threw it I use a 18 gauge solid copper wire tin it and solder it in the board. A bit time consuming but it works. I guess a lot of folks wouldn't go to all this trouble but this DIY stuff is fun to me. My next major task is going to be setting up my own aluminum anodizing in the garage. Have alot of what i need already. Main thing left to get is a power supply and the chemicals.
Oh yeah , found me some blue UV curable soldermask today and order a couple of them. I think it is going to look nicer then the same old green you see on most stuff.
Oh yeah , found me some blue UV curable soldermask today and order a couple of them. I think it is going to look nicer then the same old green you see on most stuff.
Okay, thanks, I figured that's how I'd handle it myself. If you look at the cross sectional area, a 24 ga. solid wire is actually equivalent to a pretty wide trace. Even for higher currents, it's probably not necessary to go to any thicker.
Is the aluminum anodizing you want to do for putting nice finishes on tube mods?
Anodizing might be handy for making solderable steel atomizer connectors, something I'm in need of myself. I need hard-metal atomizer connectors. The threads on the brass ones wear out too fast. Stainless with a solderable plating would be ideal. And not those loose crappy thread jobs they do. I want nice tight threads like the connectors on the Prodigy and ICONs from PureSmoker. I love that about the ICON I have. .....en atomizer threads.
Is the aluminum anodizing you want to do for putting nice finishes on tube mods?
Anodizing might be handy for making solderable steel atomizer connectors, something I'm in need of myself. I need hard-metal atomizer connectors. The threads on the brass ones wear out too fast. Stainless with a solderable plating would be ideal. And not those loose crappy thread jobs they do. I want nice tight threads like the connectors on the Prodigy and ICONs from PureSmoker. I love that about the ICON I have. .....en atomizer threads.
Here is what i got for the top of the board. Was able to cut the vias down to two. Also almost shaved 100 thousandths off the 1/2 width if you wanted to the board can be thinner.
EDIT: Here goes the bottom. The blue trace is a suggestion to pop it back threw on the front and power pin 4 and the pot only when the switch is pressed.
For powering atomizers i dont play around with traces or wire. From the batteries to the connector i want the least amount of resistance possible. From running silver wires to making big fat traces with 3oz per a side copper clad boards I over kill the hell outa my load carrying traces and wires.
The anodizing is mainly for my mod but any kinda aluminum can be done. Want to try out some dual colors like this guy did to his paintball gun
EDIT: Here goes the bottom. The blue trace is a suggestion to pop it back threw on the front and power pin 4 and the pot only when the switch is pressed.
For powering atomizers i dont play around with traces or wire. From the batteries to the connector i want the least amount of resistance possible. From running silver wires to making big fat traces with 3oz per a side copper clad boards I over kill the hell outa my load carrying traces and wires.
The anodizing is mainly for my mod but any kinda aluminum can be done. Want to try out some dual colors like this guy did to his paintball gun
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Hehe, I looked at that photo and thought, "what the hell kind of e-cig is that?" Then I read the text and saw it was a paintball gun. Had me confused for a minute there.
On the trace widths, I usually do .1" per amp which keeps the drop under 5mV per inch with 1oz copper. That's usually tolerable for me. Sounds like you're shooting for drops in the µV.
On the trace widths, I usually do .1" per amp which keeps the drop under 5mV per inch with 1oz copper. That's usually tolerable for me. Sounds like you're shooting for drops in the µV.
If you give your traces .100" per amp you overkill more then me. One inch traces for a 10amp reg. I guess you meant .010" . I use this tool that lets you know how much your traces will heat up under load. I try to get them to heat up less then 10cANSI PCB Track Width Calculator
Took out the 1206 cap and replaced it with a 0603 they are 10 for a dollar Digi-Key - 445-5099-1-ND (Manufacturer - C1608X7R1E103J)
Well, you were talking about using silver wire and fills. I typcially don't use fills without a specific need. I always use a ground plane, but that's standard practice. On my latest mod, I'm using a 6mm 1oz copper trace for atomizer current flow. I figure that about 2mm per amp for a reasonable worst case. Pretty close to .1" You said you are using 2oz copper so that would be .05" per amp I would use which would be more practical in terms of circuit board space.
That is looking awesome. I haven't played with this level of circuitry in many years. There was a time I could do these without thinking twice about it... If you have input to better components by all means I am completely open. We just want to make a couple of these to test out how well the work and then we will looking into having them mass produced by a someone if we are happy with their performance.
I will be testing the position of the POT tomorrow as I have been away from home for a couple of days. If the positioning works out we will be ready to give it a go. Clutchjunkie says he has been using this circuit for a while and likes it. Hopefully I agree with him =]
I will be testing the position of the POT tomorrow as I have been away from home for a couple of days. If the positioning works out we will be ready to give it a go. Clutchjunkie says he has been using this circuit for a while and likes it. Hopefully I agree with him =]
We should probably continue this over at http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/battery-mods/194095-my-first-pulse-width-modulator-mod.html as that is what got me started on this and I am sure they would like to be in on what we are discussing.
I was just eye balling the position of the POT before I head to bead here and we may need to try and slide it more to the inside of the board. It looks like the positive atty connection will protrude just enough to hit it where we have it placed and may not allow enough room for the wire that has to run to it.Ok how do these two look to you bstedh. You didnt have a LED part in the list so i just slapped a 0805 pad in there. can change it out if needed.
I will take a couple of pics of what I am talking about tomorrow when I cut out a piece of proto board the size needed for fitting.
Oh and is that 555 your looking at have underneath connections? I have to be able to hit with my iron =] or is your outline just for reference?
Pot can be moved for sure there is quite a bit of room to play with. Also need to know what side of the board you want it on. I just guessed and though it would go opposite side of the switch. Just need to know that and how much clearance you from the end it needs.
That foot print for a 8-soic ( 555timer) was already in the program. Real life it doesnt look like that you will have pins to solder. I checked it to make sure the pads were in the right place but i didnt check the width of the pads they are a bit skinny. I will go ahead and make a footprint of it and fix it up with a proper silk of how the chip really looks.
I went ahead and bread boarded this circuit minus the switch and zener . It works for me but i only have a 250ohm. My next lowest is a 10k pot seems to work better on the 10k for me anyways. Also might need to add a resistor to the pin3 gate trace to pull it low. From the other thread if i remember right there was a latching problem. Also i believe pin 5 should be capped to ground if not used( not sure if it even matters or not ).
I might mess with it a bit tonight and throw it on the PWM thread where the circuit comes from.
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