@stevem - It’s exciting to me to see that it may be possible to learn enough from self study to design and have a board manufactured! I hope that when you receive the boards, you will open a topic and give us a rundown of your experiences. How much did you study? Any major problems? Did you use the $5/in^2 prototype service? Happy with vendor? …
In Reply 5 above, I describe first thoughts of what I would like to design. I’ll be looking forward to hearing about your results.
I can’t say how much time I spent, sporadically over a couple of weeks.
No major problems. A minor problem is that you can’t drag and drop a KiCAD 7 design into OSHPark (6 or older works I think). The workaround is to output gerber files from KiCAD and input those into OSHPark. My design has an Arduino Nano, couple of transistors, some resistors, a barrel jack, a dc-to-dc converter, a screw terminal block, some JST connectors, and some pin headers. I created a footprint for the dc-to-dc converter, and used one from the DigiKey library for the screw terminal block. The rest were stock in KiCAD. I found it frustrating to decide which connectors to use and which footprints for them. There seems to be a myriad of connector names.
The board is 2.35 x 1.85 inches and cost $21.70 for 3 boards, so yes $5/sq inch.
I’ve added two ‘office hours’ type events for the next two Tuesdays to the calendar:
https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/events/view/19453
https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/events/view/19457
Maybe I’ll host a more specific class on Kicad/PCBs if I see enough interest. For now, I’ll host these office hours as they’ll be more helpful if only a few people have specific needs.
The last two replies are exactly what I need.
@stevem - I’ll start the tutorials tonight. Your board looks great.
@bobbycounts - I’ll be at your office hour events to round out what I may miss in the tutorials.
I got my board back from OSHPark, and there is a problem - it is missing the “slot holes” for the barrel jack:
Turns out, there are multiple way to describe slot holes in gerber files, and not all are supported. OSHPark is going to redo my boards for free, which is nice of them. If you have slot holes, use these settings in KiCAD when you create the drill files:
I could have seen the problem ahead of time in the preview of the board, which gets created when you order it, but I didn’t notice it. OSHPark support said that upload of the kicad_pcb file for KiCAD 7 is in the works, but not ready yet. I haven’t worked with the board yet, other than verify that the other components will fit.
This is a common pitfall, and it seems all board suppliers are different. Even worse - many of their tools will display correct still generate the wrong boards. The common failure mode is a hole at one end where the slot should be.
Adding a note saying the board has slots can help it get additional scrutiny, but it’s not a guarantee.
