Cheap PCB's

General
1

I stumbled across this site http://dorkbotpdx.org/wiki/pcb_order it
has excellent prices on PCB's. $5.00 sq.in and you get 3 copies of
your board plus free shipping included. I'm ordering some soon for my
sumobot, figured I would let everyone else know about it

2

So, do you use Eagle or some other s/w to make Gerber files? Maybe we
could setup a workshop on this topic...

3

Yes, most pcb cad programs will produce gerber files. This sort of stuff requires several long tutorials, just an fyi. Sparkfun has some tutorials on this.

Jon

4

Agree. I’m just fishing to see what free resources folks are using. I’ve used a downloaded captive PCB CAD app from a web-based PCB service in the past. We can chat Tuesday night. It may be easier/better for Galileo’s finger to make a board rather than hand wire up a handful of chips and LEDs.

Jim

5

This is *DIRT* cheap, i.e. about half the cheapest commercial
boardhouse I use ( www.apcircuits.com) for boards with soldermask.
They accept eagle format files too, Jim.

I was planning on doing a class on taking a circuit board design and
getting it manufactured but I'm super swamped getting some projects
finished right now so I doubt I'll be able to do the class before the
next deadline (3/21)

-Dave B.

6

OK, so following DaveB's first site links points to the following
sites:
http://www.apcircuits.com/resources/downloads/downloads.html
http://www.apcircuits.com/resources/technologies/cad_programs.html
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/freeware.htm (EAGLE Light Edition freeware
version)
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/ (EAGLE V5.11 Light 1-user $49.)

And this would be the software to have?

Jim

7

That's a question to start Holy Wars Jim. I use EAGLE because it is
cheap for the professional, free for the hobbyist, is pretty damn high
quality software and is fairly easy to use. I've been meaning to
check out the GEDA suite but I haven't had time to yet. I was taught
EAGLE in a few hours and it took me a few years to get really good at
it. There is a very large "enthusiast" following of Eagle and it's
pretty easy to get help.
-D