Making a PCB is easy...

Add links or just chat about things you've found elsewhere on the web...or just add a "plug" for a local event happening near you...!
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UBT - Mikee
Marvin the Dalek
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Making a PCB is easy...

Post by UBT - Mikee »

A bit more complicated than I thought!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljOoGyCso8s
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UBT - Timbo
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Re: Making a PCB is easy...

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Hi Mikee,

Very interesting....that is one hell of a "find". What made you look that up?

Going back to the late 1970's I used to buy ETI (Electronics Today International) and Elektor magazines from my local WH Smiths, whenever there was an interesting article I wanted to see or try out. (I was a budding electronics student at the time).

What always caught my attention were the pages of black "masks" that were printed in the mag, the idea being that you could buy some single layer copper board (available from all sorts, including Maplins, Watford Electronics etc) and then use the mask templates to create your own PCBs. You could buy photo resist too from the same places and if you had the time/space/energy, you could build your own version of the PCB design.

The mags included component listings and in the back (IIRC) were "erratum" pages for older projects where they found mistakes in the original published design.

At the time all these boards were single layer, with components on the top side and the solder joints underneath. Nowadays, as shown in the video, there are multi-layer boards of much greater complexity....far more complicated than I could ever attempt.

Now, I'm showing my age...!!

regards
Tim

Edit: I found a copy of the UK version of ETI on a website - take a lookie here:

http://www.acornelectron.co.uk/mags/et/cats/et8411.html
Jeffers
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Re: Making a PCB is easy...

Post by Jeffers »

I remember building stuff using Veroboard (I think that's what it was called) which had copper strips running across a perforated board. You had a tool that cut breaks in the strips to plan out your circuits and then solder components on to finish the job. My son still has an electronic model train controller that I built using this method many years ago. I also remember using the copper covered boards where you'd use a special pen to draw on your circuits and then remove the unwanted copper in an acid bath! Don't think you could do that these days.....

PS. just looked it up... it is Veroboard and it's still available!
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Woodles
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Re: Making a PCB is easy...

Post by Woodles »

In the olden days, we had a pen plotter at work for printing out drawings for the mechanical department where their software produced vector files.

With a piece of copper clad board taped securely to the bed of the plotter and the ink pen replaced with an etch resist one, we "printed" quite a few circuit boards.

Veroboard is still around Jeff, I was using some a couple of years back to make a circuit to automatically power cycle my BU ASICs and only last week a piece was conscripted to allow two PSUs to be controlled together as I didn't have a 2000W PSU handy!

Mark.
UBT - Mikee
Marvin the Dalek
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Re: Making a PCB is easy...

Post by UBT - Mikee »

UBT - Timbo wrote: Wed Jun 13, 2018 10:42 pm Hi Mikee,

Very interesting....that is one hell of a "find". What made you look that up?
Hi

Thanks.

Been following 'Strange Parts' since he started https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO8DQr ... 37qNqTooOw - check out the trouble he had in adding a headphone jack to a new iphone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA

Mike
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