Are you interested in designing your own printed circuit boards (PCBs)? Then EE Times has a couple of things that you’ll be interested in:
- Webinar: Fundamentals of PCB Design. This free, introductory overview of printed-circuit design treats the main difficulties you will likely meet when planning, designing, and manufacturing printed circuit boards for digital applications. From this lecture you will take away many nuggets of wisdom concerning manufacturing technology, signal integrity, EMI, power quality, thermal analysis, and project management.
- A Guide to Low-Cost PCB Tools. This short blog post, written by Adam Carlson, Senior Mechanical Design Engineer, Eagle Technologies, lists eight different PCB design tools that are available for free or are low cost.
If you’re already doing your own PCB design, what tools are you using?
David says
This “Webinar” is FAR from “free”. To view it you have to give your personal contact information to UBM (United Business Media), the nasty media conglomerate that swallowed up EDN, EETimes, Info Week, etc.
Dan KB6NU says
Well, you’re correct about that, but it doesn’t cost any money. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether or not the knowledge that you gain from this webinar is worth the price of them having your e-mail address.
As for UBM being a “nasty media conglomerate,” I’ll have to recuse myself. As a freelance writer, I’ve done work for UBM, for which they’ve paid me.
Adam says
Hey, I happened to be looking through your blog site (brought here by another topic) to find that you mentioned my blog post on PCB design tools. Thanks for the mention. I hope that it was useful. There is a followup where I review DipTrace. If you are interested, I will post the link.
Dan KB6NU says
Please do post the link!
Adam says
Here is the link:
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?doc_id=1320319&page_number=1#!
On a side note, I have really enjoyed reading through the posts on your blog. I have recently become interested in RF because of my hobby of RC submarines. We, in the US use 75MHz for the receivers, but with the advent of 2.4GHz many RC manufacturers have stopped making receivers and other gear. 2.4 GHz significantly attenuates in water and hence is not usable to us. I have been studying up to design and build an RX and in the process of getting the pieces made into breakout boards.
liuliying says
1, As far as possible use 45 ° wiring, don’t use 90 ° to reduce the radiation of high-frequency signals; (High standard Need double arc).
2, Any signal lines do not form a loop, if unavoidable, the loop should be as small as possible; signal lines to minimize vias.
3, The key line as short and thick as possible, and with protection on both sides.
4, Through the flat cable to send sensitive signals and noise signals with the field, to use “ground – signal – ground” approach leads.
5, The key signal should be reserved for test points to facilitate the production and maintenance testing purposes.
6, When schematic wiring is completed, the wiring should be optimized.
At the same time, after the initial network inspection and DRC check is correct, the unrouted area filled with ground wire, with a large area of copper for ground wire, don’t used the printed circuit board are connected to the ground as the ground Line . Or made of multi-layer board, power, ground occupied by a layer. I believe your design ability will be greatly enhanced. http://www.pcbindex.com