EAGLE Series— Homemade PCB

Series Intro & Motivations — Eagle Series — Episode #01

Published in

Jungletronics

5 min readFeb 24, 2019

I’ve been playing with electronics for a long time, but just now I have decided to buy Simon Monk’s book Make Your Own PCBs with EAGLE: From Schematic Designs to Finished Boards 2nd Edition and get out doing my boards.

In this series of posts I’m sharing with you, hobbyists too, I suppose, my experiences of etching and designing homemade PCBs using Eagle while reading that helpful book. Welcome o/

Why EAGLE?

It’s free and used by many in the Maker Community, such as Jeremy Blum, SparkFun, Adafruit and so on…anyone else?

What is EAGLE?

Is a scriptable electronic design automation (EDA) application with schematic capture, printed circuit board (PCB) layout, auto-router, and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) features. EAGLE stands for Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor (German: Einfach Anzuwendender Grafischer Layout-Editor) and is developed by CadSoft Computer GmbH. The company was acquired by Autodesk Inc. in 2016.[2]

What is PCB technology?

A printed circuit board (PCB) mechanically supports and electrically connects electronic components or electrical components using conductive tracks, pads, and other features etched from one or more sheet layers of copper laminated onto and/or between sheet layers of a non-conductive substrate.

PCB — Small Volume For Us Hobbyists — WIIFY

As a hobbyist, I need at most only one working board after testing out an idea by creating a preliminary model or prototype.

Sooner or later you’re gonna make your first release to the market known as Minimum Viable Product (MVP). See Jeremy Blum’s The “Idea to Innovation Flowchart” is now Available for Sale.

But what cheap options do I have available to choose from? do PCB at home, obviously :) DIY ;)

From now on your audience will say something like this :):):)Omg this is The Cutest Prototype on Twitter… look at this …. Thanks for thinking and sharing … :):):) and sort of… you’ve got the idea!

And I will reply: Here is WIIFY! (What Is In For You!). Read this Series to get your MVP on the Market now!

How?

By learning to design PCB using Eagle:)

Hobbyist Methods:

Laser-printed resist — Laser-print onto toner transfer paper, heat-transfer with an iron or modified laminator onto bare laminate, soak in the water bath, touch up with a marker, then etch (the method used by myself:);
Vinyl film and resist — non-washable marker, some other methods. Labor-intensive, only suitable for single;
Print onto transparent film — and use as photomask along with photo-sensitized boards, then etch. (Alternatively, use a film photoplotter);
Laser resist ablation;
PCB milling;
Laser etching …among others…

What The Community Says…

A large group of textual and video tutorials exists for beginners to design their own PCBs.[19]

The DIY electronics site SparkFun uses EAGLE and releases the EAGLE files for boards designed in-house. SparkFun Electronics[20] is a company that has grown due to the hobbyist market exemplified by Make magazine and others. Many of these companies offer EAGLE part libraries[21] which define schematic shapes, pinouts, and part sizes to allow for correct layout in the PCB layout editor.

Other popular libraries include Adafruit,[22] Arduino,[23] SnapEDA,[24] and Dangerous Prototypes,[25] element14 (a subsidiary of Farnell, former owners of CadSoft) also have some libraries available from their site.[26]

Using ULPs to convert EAGLE .BRD files into Specctra-compatible design files (with file extension .DSN) it is possible to export designs for usage in conjunction with advanced external autorouters such as KONEKT ELECTRA,[27] Eremex TopoR [28] or Alfons Wirtz’s FreeRouting.[29] For further touching-up the finished designs in session format can be imported back into EAGLE via .SES to .SCR script file converters.

(extract from Wikipedia:)

Omg, what programs are out there to help me up?

Here is Short List of EDA (electronic design automation) companies — PCB layout software: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_EDA_companies

EDA Programs

EAGLE

EAGLE is a scriptable electronic design automation (EDA) application with schematic capture, printed circuit board (PCB) layout, auto-router and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) features. EAGLE stands for Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor (German: Einfach Anzuwendender Grafischer Layout-Editor) and is developed by CadSoft Computer GmbH. The company was acquired by Autodesk Inc. in 2016.[2]

Proteus

The Proteus Design Suite is a proprietary software tool suite used primarily for electronic design automation. The software is used mainly by electronic design engineers and technicians to create schematics and electronic prints for manufacturing printed circuit boards

http://downloads.labcenter.co.uk/videos/v8/proteusPCB.mp4

KiCad

KiCad (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiCad)(pronounced “Key-CAD”[6]) is a free software suite for electronic design automation (EDA). It facilitates the design of schematics for electronic circuits and their conversion to PCB designs. KiCad was originally developed by Jean-Pierre Charras. It features an integrated environment for schematic capture and PCB layout design. Tools exist within the package to create a bill of materials, artwork, Gerber files, and 3D views of the PCB and its components.

Fritzing

Fritzing is an open-source hardware initiative that makes electronics accessible as a creative material for anyone. We offer a software tool, a community website, and services in the spirit of Processing and Arduino, fostering a creative ecosystem that allows users to document their prototypes, share them with others, teach electronics in a classroom, and layout and manufacture professional PCBs.

In the Next Episode? we’re gonna installing Eagle and make some useful things.

The Series Will Be Continued…Stay Tuned!

Download All Files For The Project:) EGL_00 EGL_01