Custom PCB manufacturing- 3 ways to Do It Yourself
Creating homemade printed circuit boards is of course quite complex. However, custom PCB manufacturing is beneficial in more than one way. Manufacturing a custom PCB by doing-it-yourself will allow you to make the board more compact, convenient to use and stronger. There are three different DIY custom PCB manufacturing methods—all of the being equally effective. The three different DIY custom PCB manufacturing methods are etching, milling, and Fab-house.
Etching
Etching is probably the most commonly used DIY method to create printed circuit boards. However, off late there has been a sharp rise in number of people using Fab-house to create custom PCB. There are many different versions of etching. Because of chemicals and equipment involved, etching can be a bit of an inconvenience. However, etching is your best bet if you need to test a design fast. Let’s now take a quick look at how you can use etching to create printed circuit boards. Following are the steps involved in PCB etching:
• On a transparent paper sheet, print your board design
• Using UV light, transfer the design to the board
• Soak the board in a printed circuit board developer solution
• Put the circuit board in an etching solution
• Use Aceton to clean the board
• Drill the holes
CNC mill
A machine that removes the unwanted copper from your circuit board is known as a CNC mill. Generally, CNC machines are quite expensive. However, you can create your own CNC mill. Three steps are involved in the milling process. The three steps include:
• Creating the board layout and circuit schematic by using a computer aided design (CAD) program such as EAGLE, KiCad, Upverter, and Altium
• Generating instructions for the CNC machine based on the board design using a computer aided manufacturing or CAM program. The language of CNC machines is G-code. You can create G-code files with CAM software such as CircuitCAM or FlatCAM
• Using the instructions generated by the computer aided manufacturing program to mill the board with a CNC machine
Fab-house
The final do-it-yourself PCB manufacturing method is Fab-house. Compared to other two DIY PCB manufacturing methods, Fab-house takes a bit longer. However, Fab-house can help you to make really complex circuits. Furthermore, PCBs manufactured using Fab-house will give your problems only if you’ve made a mistake with your soldering or in the board or schematics layout. Three steps are involved in Fab-house including:
Designing your printed circuit board
With the help of PCB software, design your printed circuit board. It is important that you draw circuit boards by following the design guidelines.
Create Gerber files
When you want to get your printed circuit board manufactured, the file format you use is the Gerber format. Once you’ve created Gerber files from your design, choose a manufacturer and send them your PCB design.
Find a manufacturer
The final step in the Fab-house process is finding a PCB manufacturer and sending them your Gerber files.