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Category: Hardware

Hardware projects

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Every package of software suite comes with an amount of collateral applications, extensions and/or libraries.
KiCad does the same; but sometimes default components aren't enough for specific goals.

Thanks to KiCad's popularity people around the world spent some of their time to enrich the base: so that you can find useful libraries or scheme directly for free on websites. Here some of them (in my opinion the most important):

Now think you don't find component you need among default and external or third-part libraries.
Two main solutions show to yourself:

  1. desperation, with profession abandon or change;
  2. design your own.

...continue reading "Kicad. From Software To Hardware Part3"

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Published on 1 Comment on How to make PCBs at home – The toner transfer method
Toner transfer method

The toner transfer method is one of the most common and cheap way to make Printed Circuit Boards at home.
Despite it's popularity this method has problems with it's repeatability since it has way too much factors that must be cleared in order to get some decent and stable results.
The method itself is pretty straight forward.
Print your circuit with your laser printer then put the printed circuit face down over a copper clad so that the toner touches the copper surface and then apply heat in order to transfer the toner from the paper to the copper.
Then you remove with water the paper and the toner will be printed into the copper clad.
Now you are ready to etch the board.
Then drill place the parts and solder.

...continue reading "How to make PCBs at home – The toner transfer method"

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The hacked laminator

Generally you need heat in order to accomplish the toner transfer method.
The toner transfer method will be explained in later tutorial.
The most difficult part at the toner transfer method is exactly this ! The toner transfer from the printed paper to the copper clad.
The classic method is to use a hot iron and iron your copper clad with the printed circuit over it.
Trust me, this method is hopeless. Even if you get a decent result you can not repeat it again and again.
You will only have a small percentage of success.
The paper , sure, is a key to this problem but does not solve all the mystery about this method.
The main problem is that you need to heat up the toner while you keep pressing over the paper.
So you have to do two things in the same time with the hot iron.
Instead doing that it is more convenient to buy a regular laminator at your local store and modify it a little bit.

...continue reading "Turn a common laminator into a PCB laminator"

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Creating menus for embedded devices is often challenging.
Usually you have very little resources and complicated menus can not be an option.

More buttons offer more possibilities but also a more complex user interface and more hardware resources.

Why more hardware resources?

Going back at the "arduino and memory how to" article we have used the button change example.
One button use one pin as input pin from our arduino processor.
So for more buttons you need more pins.

There are methods that you can "bypass" this problem as we will see in next articles but anyway more buttons = more cost.

...continue reading "Circular menu in arduino"

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The etching is the technique that a strong acid chemical solution "eats" the unprotected copper.

So the etching method can be used for the production of printed circuit boards (PCB) since acid can be used to remove the unwanted copper from a copper clad.
A nice and easy method in order to make printed circuits at home is to use the so called : "toner transfer method". This method will be discussed in another article.
For now keep in mind that you have a copper clad (fr4) with the circuit "printed" (with toner) on it.

So this printed copper board can be etched with an acid solution called etchant.
This acid solution will eat all the unprotected toner and the remained, protected by the toner, copper will be our final printed circuit.

...continue reading "Learn how to make at home an etching solution"

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