Keep in mind throughout this post that following common manufacturing standards is always the cheapest, fastest, and least complicated route through the prototyping process.
Instead, we’re going to focus on fabrication specifications – the design requirements that have less to do with defining the electrical function of your product, but have a tremendous affect on its cost, yield, supply chain, and manufacturability. In our opinion, this three-part series by SparkFun is among the best:
#Prototype board how to
In this blog post, we’re not going to focus on how to create schematics and PCBs in EAGLE, since there are already several extraordinary tutorials on the web that do a great job. Many PCB design software packages have built-in tools for generating these kinds of files – at Particle, we use EAGLE, a free and powerful PCB design suite popular with engineers all over the world. Gerbers files are the digital blueprints that allow manufacturers to build your PCB, layer by layer. In this first post, we’re going to share some tips about defining and communicating PCB fabrication specifications, and creating gerber files for your prototype. They contain electrical components that determine the behavior of your product, and come in all shapes and sizes. PCBs (printed circuit boards) are the heart and brains of every product that turns on, plugs in, or lights up.
This week, we’re excited to kick off a three part blog series about building your first PCB prototype.