Printed circuit board fabrication

Brian Gaff wrote:
Its the bloody holes that cause the hassle usually.
Brian


I have a drill press that makes clean 1 mm or less holes quite neatly. I
don't need plated through. btw.

Brian Gaff wrote:
When you say you need two different ones, are they totally different,
or could you have both simply by having a few links on the pcb? That
way, only one tooling up cost.

Good idea, unfortunately they are a lot different.

David Looser wrote:

I had a PCB made up a few years back. Normally I build everything on
veroboard,


Same here.

but this particular job required several multi-legged
surface mount chips and there was no way I was going to be able to do
that on veroboard, nor was I going to be able to achieve anything
approaching the required accuracy with a DIY PCB.

The only smd work I've done was to modify a webcam for astrophotography
work. That involved lifting a few chip legs and soldering some wires to
them. That was bad enough, thank you.


The company I found
had their own PCB design software that could be downloaded from their
website. After designing the board I uploaded the design and pretty
soon afterwards the PCBs arrived in the post. I can't at the moment
remember the name of the company or how much it cost, but it did seem
good value at the time.

If it should come to you, please let me know.

In the meantime I'll Google and Ebay when I get time.

"Tony Lacy Cock Sucker "

You people have given me great advice before (grovel, grovel) so here I am
asking for some more.


** Get this OT ****e of the NG

- you PITA pommy ****head !!

"Tony Lacy Cock Sucker "

You people have given me great advice before (grovel, grovel) so here I am
asking for some more.


** Get this OT ****e of the NG

- you PITA pommy ****head !!

"Tony Lacy Cock Sucker "

You people have given me great advice before (grovel, grovel) so here I am
asking for some more.


** Get this OT ****e of the NG

- you PITA pommy ****head !!

"TonyL"

"Tony Lacy Cock Sucker "

You people have given me great advice before (grovel, grovel) so here I am
asking for some more.


** Get this OT ****e of the NG

- you PITA pommy ****head !!

"TonyL" wrote in message
...

One way is to make a transparency and use that to mask a board coated
with an emulsion then exposed to UV and develop. Then etch in the
normal way.


That looks the most likely option for me.

UV boxes start at around 70 UKP, though. Surely they are just boxes with
UV bulbs and maybe a timer. Any reason I can't make my own box and buy a
replacement UV bulb or two ?

Isn't the old light-sensitive resist still around?

Also, direct sunlight is loaded with UV.

Hi Tony

there is quite a good article here about making the parts for short
production runs of PCBs

http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/pcbs.html

You can also get the required parts and chemicals from he

http://www.megauk.com/

With regards to the software, there are several low-cost packages you can
buy. If you are local to Maplins (I assume that you are in the UK and not
in the colonies as one of this newsgroup's contributors is) there is a neat
little software package called PCB Wizard which costs around £30 or so and
does most functions and has some libraries, auto routing etc.

So it might cost you about £100 of so to set it up, assuming that you have a
good quality printer, but its also good fun and you will never use Veroboard
again :-)

Cheers

Mike


"TonyL" wrote in message
...
You people have given me great advice before (grovel, grovel) so here I am
asking for some more.

I've made PCBs before but always as one-off projects using transfers and
etch resist pens. But I need to produce 50-60 now !

My requirements are very modest...single sided, a couple of 14 pin DILs
and a few other components, size around 50mm x 100mm.

Does anybody know of a reasonably priced outfit who can supply small PCBs
? Artwork would be supplied by me. In what form is this normally required
?

Or should I go ahead get a photoresist kit and supplies ? I'm starting
from scratch here with a few working prototypes on veroboard.

Thanks all.

Arny Krueger wrote:
"TonyL" wrote in message
...

One way is to make a transparency and use that to mask a board
coated with an emulsion then exposed to UV and develop. Then etch
in the normal way.


That looks the most likely option for me.

UV boxes start at around 70 UKP, though. Surely they are just boxes
with UV bulbs and maybe a timer. Any reason I can't make my own box
and buy a replacement UV bulb or two ?

Isn't the old light-sensitive resist still around?


I've never seen that. I would imagine handling while keeping it out of the
light would be inconvenient.

Also, direct sunlight is loaded with UV.


Sun ? Sun ? This is February and I'm in Wales !