Getting started with circuitry

[feare56]

Since i am doing alright with operating system development i thought i would stretch out and start making my own circuitry. Where would be a great place to learn how to start, and how to make your own circuit boards

[CWood]

My honest advice would be to start with basic theory (obviously), using an emulator such as SPICE. Start out messing with LEDs and transistors to begin with, and get to grips with the various different laws, like Ohm's and Kirchoff's (sp), then have a play with simple ICs, like 555's etc, then possibly move on to microcontrollers. Amplifiers are also interesting to play with. I wouldn't even think of making your own boards just yet, as this can get very expensive.

But, to answer your question on how to make your own boards, you have two options. Either, you can etch them, or route them. To route them, you need a good quality CNC router or miller, and you simply send it your gerber files (or whatever other format you decide to use), and it mills them out of copper clad board. This isn't a particularly good method when it comes to fine pin pitch, but it is good enough for the basics, and you can get pin pitches good enough for DIP and SIP packages, which is good enough to begin with.

Etching, I confess, I have never done, however it basically entails using a strong acid, or other corrosive chemical (ferric chloride is quite popular), to eat away parts of the copper that you don't need. There are a few methods to protect the stuff you do want. The first is photoresist. Print out your PCB design onto acetate, reversed, and lay it over a photoresist board. This then goes into a UV light box, and then gets developed. The photoresist that hasn't been developed, will stay where your tracks are, and protect them from the acid/whatever, which you can then use.

Another method is using ink. Some people print directly onto the PCB, and etch it from there. I don't know the specifics of this method. As for the others, Google it, as I can't for the life of me remember.

[Combuster]

For the love of your wallet, start with one of these

[feare56]

Thanks i will try SPICE then move to the soderless board. But i also saw somewhere on youtube that you can use a couple of household items to make the acid and use fingernail polish to make the path then place it in the acid and it will make a board, could that actually be done or is it better to make the board one of the ways you described CWord

[CWood]

My honest advice would be to try it and find out... if it works, it would be a lot cheaper than buying the chemicals, but the likelihood is you'd probably not get as high quality board. Of course, if you decide to go into production, you'd probably end up using a professional company anyway.

[Velko]

Do not bother with nail polish. Drawing tracks by hand is very tedious and error-prone. And results will not look good either.

IMHO the easiest method to transfer tracks onto board is by using laser printer and iron.

[Mikemk]

I'm gonna try that.

[LieutenantHacker]

If I may add, this site is one I am working on with electronic engineering basics and principles:

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com

[rdos]

I've done bread-boards, made my own PCBs (which didn't look good), but I wouldn't do that again. Currently, I do all the design with EDWin, and let professional PCB manufacturers make the PCBs using the Macaos tool. That gives reliable boards that look good, and it doesn't cost a lot (a few $100s for 1-10 PCBs).

[LieutenantHacker]

I've been interested in electronic engineering for several months now, but haven't had the time to advance much beyond simple electron/atom and attraction/repulsion basics.

Is math a strong suit needed?

[Yoda]

Is math a strong suit needed?

For the designing analog circuits the strong math base is required. But it is quite sufficient the level of bachelor, not master degree. For the pure digital cirquits the math is not required but the practice and accuracy are highly desirable since the cost of errors is high enough. After you make PCB and solder sample the most frequent cost of error is making new PCB. And if the error is found after making a production lot the cost is not just a writing software patch but throwing away the whole lot and making a new (if there is no possibility to manually rewire existing PCBs).