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Step 2Create Artwork
I'm assuming you've captured your schematic and laid out your PCB in something like Eagle--if you don't know what I'm talking about, you'd better start off by learning schematic capture, and PCB layout. Once you've got the PCB laid out, you will need to create negative photo masks. A negative photo mask is a transparency that is clear where you want copper and black where you want to remove copper. One hint: if you make a habit of filling your PCB layers with ground or power planes, you will save a lot of toner. Also, note that you can tile your PCB layout in Eagle using the group copy command if there is not an associated schematic file (otherwise it will complain you have to do this in the schematic"). I found the process of inverting the colors in your output to be surprisingly difficult, but eventually I settled on this fairly simple approach using the open source vector drawing software Inkscape:
1. Make sure you've selected just the layers necessary for etching (e.g. Top/Bottom, Pads, Vias).
2. Use Eagle's print function to output to a PDF file. Even though we're printing on transparencies, you'll still want to mirror the top layer so as to place the printed side closest to the board and prevent bleeding.
3. If you don't already have Inkscape installed, download it and install it now.
4. Open the PDF in Inkscape (accept the default loading parameters).
5. Open the Layers pane (Menu Layer:Layers).
6. Click the + button to add a layer. Name it whatever you like (I named mine "b" ).
7. Click the down arrow to move the new layer to the bottom.
8. Select the rectangle tool from the tool pane.
9. Right-click the blue color swatch at the bottom of the screen and select Set stroke .
10. Right-click the grey color swatch and select Set fill .
11. Click and drag to draw an rectangle around your board.
12. Select the arrow tool, then select and drag each side of your rectangle right to the edge of your board. The display should look something like this:
13. Right click the black swatch at the bottom of the screen and select Set Fill . Right click the black swatch again and select Set stroke .
14. Click the eye icon in the layers palette to turn off the b layer.
15. Click and drag to select your board (or click the select all visible icon on the toolbar).
16. Negate the image (Menu Effects:Color:Negative)
17. Click the eye icon for the b layer again. You should now have something like this:
18. Click Save-As , then change the file type to PDF via Cairo , and append _out to the filename (e.g. test_out.pdf) so as not to overwrite the original.
19. Click Save-As again to save as the default SVG format.
1. Make sure you've selected just the layers necessary for etching (e.g. Top/Bottom, Pads, Vias).
2. Use Eagle's print function to output to a PDF file. Even though we're printing on transparencies, you'll still want to mirror the top layer so as to place the printed side closest to the board and prevent bleeding.
3. If you don't already have Inkscape installed, download it and install it now.
4. Open the PDF in Inkscape (accept the default loading parameters).
5. Open the Layers pane (Menu Layer:Layers).
6. Click the + button to add a layer. Name it whatever you like (I named mine "b" ).
7. Click the down arrow to move the new layer to the bottom.
8. Select the rectangle tool from the tool pane.
9. Right-click the blue color swatch at the bottom of the screen and select Set stroke .
10. Right-click the grey color swatch and select Set fill .
11. Click and drag to draw an rectangle around your board.
12. Select the arrow tool, then select and drag each side of your rectangle right to the edge of your board. The display should look something like this:
13. Right click the black swatch at the bottom of the screen and select Set Fill . Right click the black swatch again and select Set stroke .
14. Click the eye icon in the layers palette to turn off the b layer.
15. Click and drag to select your board (or click the select all visible icon on the toolbar).
16. Negate the image (Menu Effects:Color:Negative)
17. Click the eye icon for the b layer again. You should now have something like this:
18. Click Save-As , then change the file type to PDF via Cairo , and append _out to the filename (e.g. test_out.pdf) so as not to overwrite the original.
19. Click Save-As again to save as the default SVG format.
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goto: file menu in Eagle
select: Export
then select: image
A dialog box appears asking where to store the IMAGE of your board
tick: monochrome
(change resolution if you want or leave it to default value )
Select: browse and then save your image file
the image saved is positive image
locate the file
open it using paint
press: ctrl+i ->this will convert positive image to negative image
then save it