My first PCB with KiCad

Filippo

Filippo

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Hello guys,

The saying "you never stop learning" is always true. ;)

For a few days now I have been working with KiCad, a free software program that allows you to develop printed circuit boards.
It took some time to get used to it, but I have now developed a board that is quite impressive.
Until today I developed my PCB with a CAD program and then sent it as a PDF file to a PCB manufacturer in Germany, now I can send Gerber data to a PCB manufacturer in China and it costs me much less than in Germany.
And the best thing is that the circuit boards from China also look much better. :D

This is not an advertisement for KiCad, I am only writing here because I am so happy. :)

Of course, this circuit board is not yet perfect, but I'm still learning.
1700683536846.png
 
hatzisn

hatzisn

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It certainly looks great. I use EasyEDA.com for which there is also a tutorial by @learnelectronics youtube channel.
 
hatzisn

hatzisn

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Also the costs are cut several times from the Greek Manufacturers ordering from China.
 
hatzisn

hatzisn

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JohnC

JohnC

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Back in the early 90's I was using a suite of apps called "Tango" (Tango Schematic, Tango PCB, Tango Route).

I created a four-layer, silk-screened PCB about 12" x 7" and stuffed with 74xx logic ic's and a Z80 CPU.

It was a lot of fun doing it the first time using a caliper to measure all the part holes and then tweaking the copper runs/wiring after the auto-router did most of the work.

It's pretty cool how the latest generation of CAD apps can produce a 3D image of the board with all the parts mounted on it - that feature was not available in an apps for under $25k in the 90's.
 
Last edited:
LucaMs

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Filippo said:
I am only writing here because I am so happy. :)
Click to expand...
I'm happy you're happy ?
So I don't want to ruin your "party" with my question:

Filippo said:
Until today I developed my PCB with a CAD program and then sent it as a PDF file to a PCB manufacturer in Germany,
Click to expand...
Filippo said:
now I can send Gerber data to a PCB manufacturer in China
Click to expand...
Couldn't you send the PDF files to PCB manufacturers in China? :oops:
 
hatzisn

hatzisn

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Beja

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Great job.. thanks for sharing..
In 1989 I worked for a company called something Dynamics, in East New York ?
I was asked to solve a problem to stop criminals from stealing the money of a Mafia company.. of course the didn't tell me they were Mafia! But in fact they were. Without going into details I ordered OrCAD PCB Layout and Schematic Capture software. More than $500 at that time, and started climbing the learning curve. It was so intuitive and easy to use.. the PCB could automatically execute up to 16 layers but I only wanted two. I used Zilog's Z-80 CPU. I loved that animal specially for the separate data and address pins and the few instruction set (only 70 basic instructions).
I used EPROM programmer and punched the program in hexa-decimal. To branch to a subroutine you must calculate destination address manually using one's and two's complement.. but I didn't care about the hassle because I was still young and had enough energy. Now all this is history and we are using Arduino and B4R so we only concentrate on the software.

Please pardon any typo

Filippo said:
Hello guys,

The saying "you never stop learning" is always true. ;)

For a few days now I have been working with KiCad, a free software program that allows you to develop printed circuit boards.
It took some time to get used to it, but I have now developed a board that is quite impressive.
Until today I developed my PCB with a CAD program and then sent it as a PDF file to a PCB manufacturer in Germany, now I can send Gerber data to a PCB manufacturer in China and it costs me much less than in Germany.
And the best thing is that the circuit boards from China also look much better. :D

This is not an advertisement for KiCad, I am only writing here because I am so happy. :)

Of course, this circuit board is not yet perfect, but I'm still learning.
View attachment 147990
Click to expand...
 
H

Hamied Abou Hulaikah

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