Electronics-Lab.com Blog

Philip designed a simple component size and silkscreen reference board:

since I kept checking old projects to figure out which silkscreens worked, and which didn’t, I made myself a simple reference board. I also included some common SMD component sizes, just to keep me from thinking 0402 was a viable default size.

[via]

Simple silkscreen reference board - [Link]

Tom Hausherr’s blog is dealing with component package technology and libraries standards and providing lots of great and clear information. If you are designing your own libraries for your next project you definatelly have to check it out!

Tom Hausherr’s Blog - [Link]

The Vetinari Clock comes as an easy to solder kit with everything you need to create your own analog clock that ticks randomly, but still keeps accurate time! The kit comes with a small PCB and all required parts, that you will solder. Also included is a medium-sized wall clock, that you will disassemble and modify, and then connect to the completed PCB board.

Vetinari Clock – A clock that ticks randomly, but still keeps accurate time – [Link]

A new PCB design web application was released this last week called PCBWeb. The website states that PCBWeb is a free browser-based CAD application for designing and manufacturing electronics hardware.  The tool is currently released in BETA and allows you to create a schematic, full circuit board layout, and then export to gerber format for manufacturing. The application is supported on Windows and Mac using Silverlight.

Features include:

Schematic Capture

• Multi-sheet schematics
• Custom Ports
• Digi-Key Part Library (+100K components with symbol and footprints)
• Cut/Copy/Past and full undo/redo

PCB Layout

• Multi-layer board
• Support for all units (mm/inch)
• copper pour
• DRC (design rule checking)
• Gerber Export

Bill of Material Manager

• View real-time pricing
• Order Links

PCBWeb – Free Online PCB Design Software - [Link]

You can use this cutter to cut very accurate PCB stencils on your home:

Are you sick and tired of using a tooth pick to apply solder paste? Are you still using through hole components because you don’t want to deal with soldering surface mount devices (SMD)? If so, this post provides you with guidelines for building your very own laser cutter for cutting PCB stencils. With a total cost of approximately $200 (it can be significantly less if you already have parts laying around), this project can pay for itself very quickly. While you can get “low cost” stencils for your PCBs, they still can be quite expensive if you are only creating one or two boards.

DIY Laser Cutter for PCB Stencils - [Link]

A new PCB CAD tool called Razen soon will bereleased on Alpha version – [via]

Razen is a collaborative, scriptable schematic and PCB layout tool. Currently in development, a first alpha release will be available by April.

Razen, a new PCB CAD tool - [Link]

Christian Aurich developed a script to import Eagle boards into FreeCAD. This way he is able to design custom enclosures.

The common solution until now is to export your board with eagleUp and assemble it with a case in Sketchup. This also gives you some drawbacks. The most important to me was that the Sketchup files are mesh based like the data used for 3D printing usually, but for further use in CAD systems this is not really usable. You also will not be able to get a STEP model that you can give to your costumers out of this data.

Script lets you import Eagle boards for use in FreeCAD - [Link]

HackEDA is an online automatic circuit design tool that compiles different Eagle schematics and boards to build a complete schematic. This is now possible because Cadsoft switched to an open XML text format for board files: [via]

At it’s core, it’s a system for collecting reusable-sized pieces of electronic designs, along with the knowledge necessary to reuse them in new designs. The library is available to browse online, you can download the individual bits, and there’s also a tool for creating custom circuits by simply selecting the features your project needs.

HackEDA builds Eagle schematics and PCBs from standard circuit blocks - [Link]

Eagle PCB Tip: Pin and Gateswapping

To optimize board routing, there are times that interchanging pins or gates is necessary. Recent article on Dangerous Prototypes gives us a full description and procedure to make this happen in EAGLE.

Eagle Tip: Gateswap and Pinswap tool - [Link]

Here’s an SVG image to Eagle polygon importer called svg2poly. It seems like an excellent alternative to the BMP importing plugin included in Eagle default package. [via]

Surprisingly often, I find myself wanting to import vector images into eagle, and have them appear as polygons – usually for silkscreen. Whilst importing vectors as lines is practical – although ridiculously awkward – up until now I haven’t found a single practical way to import a vector drawing as polygons.

Importing SVG images as polygons Into Eagle - [Link]