Digital Design
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Custom Equipment

PCB Design

Laying out a PCB on a Light Box Once a circuit has been designed it needs to be converted to a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design so that it can be manufactured.

When I first started my career this process was done entirely by hand. First you worked for days or even weeks with pencil and paper on a huge sheet of graph paper until you had all the tracks routed correctly. Then you went to using self-adhesive tapes on sheets of mylar, working on a light box at a scale of 2:1, to create the camera-ready artwork.

 

PCB CAD software Now we all work with PCB CAD software running on PCs. Autorouter software can now do in seconds what used to take weeks of mental anguish.

I have experience designing for:

  • single sided, double sided or multilayer PTH boards
  • through hole or surface mount devices
  • ground and power planes
  • solder masks, and screen print layers

 

Usually the final PCB artwork is plotted by a Gerber Photoplotter for best results during the manufacturing process.

 

Gerber Photoplot