But what if you're stranded on a desert island with no laser printer and you still want to work out a super-quick printed circuit? What then?
(OK, honestly, I just find it a bit of a hassle to fire up Eagle, etc just to make a quick and dirty battery-charger circuit.)
Here's a start-to-finish home-etching-with-Sharpies mini-tutorial. It's basically "draw the circuit with sharpies, then etch" but the gold is in the details.
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Signing UpStep 1Stuff You'll Need
Copper clad board
Ruler and matte knife to cut it
Scrubby pad to shine it
Three (3!) Kinds of Sharpie: Ultra-Fine, Fine (Regular), Chisel-Tip (Wide)
An empty piece of protoboard (the secret ingredient)
Etchant
Drill and bit
Components
Soldering Iron
Pen and paper for working out the circuit layout
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Anyway, the PCB techniques you present here are excellent ideas, thank you for taking the time to post them online so the rest of us can learn from it.
I am impressed by your creative use of perfboard, both in marking and especially drilling. I was half expecting you to say "okay, now guess at where you thought the pins were," but no, you give us a very good tactic instead.
I may not do PCBs by hand anytime soon, but now I am armed with a proven plan of attack when the need arises. Hooray for The Real Elliot! :)
also dude down there `´ `´ dont drill it, cut the pins off and solder like they are smd's, takes some practice, but driling is a pain without the proper tools
The non-fragile bits I have been using look like regular 1/16" bits, but read 0.039" in the calipers (5/128"?!?). They seem to be stronger than the carbide ones, and are a good size for DIY holes.
Or skip the drilling and the mirror-imaging entirely, and do everything top-mount. (I smell another instructable coming...)
hot = might as well not really be there because its saturated with heat
for a heat sink to really work it has to dissipate more heat than its absorbing, that way its wicking the heat away into air
try replacing that copper pcb with a flattened down "slot cover" from the back of a pc and see if you notice any difference, i bet you will :)