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Ever since I started working, I have always been amazed at how fast technology moves. Being in the technology business certainly exposes you to vulnerabilities of this trend. A few of the projects of the past have been victims of this “greatest and latest” arms race. As a direct result, these projects have failed miserably.

There are other problems with technology, not the least of which is that the state of the art is always very expensive. I cannot speak for other fields and disciplines, but this is almost always true of consumer products. The driving factor behind these products is silicon, because without it, there would be no electronic revolution.

Within the discipline of electronics engineering, itself a sub-discipline of electrical engineering, one of the major tasks is to connect the silicon. Typically, all electronic products of today have one or more PCB (printed circuit board) connecting various ICs (integrated circuits, or chips), resistors, capacitors and other passive components to make a circuit that performs amazing feats. However, just as with any other field, the state of the art of PCB can be quite expensive. NASA’s 10+ layered PCBs used in satellites usually costs tens of thousands of dollars for the board alone, and that’s NOT including the parts! Well… we call them NASA boards in the industry, because only NASA can afford them; I don’t actually know what goes into a NASA PCB. All joking aside however, PCB’s is a major cost factor during manufacturing. These factors must be considered during the design phase. For a small company or a hobbyist, the prototyping cost of a PCB is an even greater financial detriment.

A few years ago, I started experimenting with homemade prototype PCBs as an alternative to professionally fabricated PCBs from board manufacturing. My company was flexible enough to give me some resources and time to explore the subject matter. What I discovered was that with a small initial investment, you can make reasonably high quality two sided boards. In addition, all the equipment needed was easily accessible. I’ve decided to put my findings into this guide. Hopefully some of my fellow hobbyists will find the information useful.

A word of advice, if you’d rather just shell out a bit of money for your boards, it’s really not that expensive for the lower end of the PCB spectrum. Advanced Circuits for example, sells full featured 2 layer boards for only $33 each. For barebone boards, I’ve purchased them for as little as $11 dollars, with minimum quantities of 5 or more. Sunstone Circuits, another online based board house sells 2 layer boards for about $28 dollars, with minimum quantities of 2 (but there are limitations). I’ll explain what the terms “layers”, “full featured” and “barebone” means later in the guide if you are unfamiliar with PCBs, but just keep in mind that if you are having trouble making the boards yourself, you can always buy them pretty cheap.

However, the biggest motivation to make the boards at home is the turnaround time. Usually the cheap economy services at the board houses are 5+ business days, plus shipping. This means that from the time you submit your design to the time that you get your board in the nice Fedex package, two weeks could have gone by. I can usually make a two layered board in 2 hours or less. In the world rapid prototype iterations, it doesn’t get any better than that. This means that if I screwed up the design in the morning, I can cover my ass by the afternoon. What more reason do you need?

So, without further ado, let’s get on with the business of making PCBs. Before you can make them however, you got to know what printed circuit boards are.

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