designing and creating pcb's

[mikgol]

Hey again,

I have another question to ask you guys. Up until now I've been buying pre-drilled PCB's.
I want to start making my own PCB's now, so I bought a blank PCB plate and some etching powder. I'll google some tutorials on how to do the etching.

I was wondering if there is some free software that you can recommend to design my circuits, print them out, and somehow transfer it to the PCB plate for etching? I'm looking for something that's very simple and easy to use, as I'm a newbie to this and won't be designing anything too complex yet.

Thanks again for helping a noob out

Mike

 

[Harald Kapp]

Kicad, Eagle, Target 3001, DesignSpark ...

 

[mikgol]

Thanks mate, I'll check those out

 

[(*steve*)]

My opinions...

The "easy" parts are designing the board and etching it.

The "hard" parts are getting the layout onto the board and drilling the board.

YMMV as to how hard you think these things are. Drilling is really only tricky for rigid components with many legs (like headers and the like). Designing the layout can be *really* hard if you're not good at it (or even if you are).

But the step where you place the resist pattern on the unetched copper is the one that can turn your good experience into a nightmare :-(