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PCB - Partial Conundrum BoardsFor this week's assignment I wanted to make a board that would hold all of the components for my final project. I learned a lot about using Protel during the process, and here's what I came up with:
Since we're being experimental about our tools (looking for better ones, freer ones, etc..) we are using Scott's software to turn Gerber and NC Drill files into something that the Modela is happy about. Unfortunately, the software wasn't happy about my Gerber and/or NC Drill file(s) - I think they were just too complicated for it. So I broke my design down into smaller pieces - logical units of circuitry that might make sense to have on their own boards anyway.
I found that the holes that the modela made weren't quite big enough for certain parts (my solenoid driver, my diode) so I went into the PCB and made those footprints have bigger pads/holes. For reference, I upped the pad size to 70 mil, and the hole size to 50 mil. Making them with the modela required that I do an initial pass with the 30mil bit, then switch bits, and give it a drill-only run with a bigger bit, to drill out the holes that needed to be bigger. The reason that 2 passes were needed was that, at the time of this writing, Scott's software doesn't have the capacity to spiral outwards to widen a hole bigger than the diameter of the bit that's there. Drilling is a straight up-and-down process.
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