PCB printing: How and Where

>>55754409
I use itead and pirate altium

>>55754610
I'd never heard of itead before now, and looking at their site now, I'm really surprised I hadn't.

Place is a damn wonderland, thank you!

>>55754409
Use "PCBShopper" for a price comparison

Eagle cad is great despite what many people say. Definitely recommended for price/feature ratio. It was recently purchased by Autodesk, so not sure if Linux will still be supported in the future. Might be worth checking out KiCad if you are Linux/Open-source type. It has excellent routing and length-tuning features now thanks to CERN. Eventually it will probably be better than Eagle, but for now it still has a lot to be desired for library management, defining footprints, and DRC in my opinion.

>I finished my EE degree last year and I've still never actually had to plan a PCB

Literally how.

Eagle is easy for small cheap shit. Bigger stuff, use an actual software design suite. I've used Advanced Circuits with their student discounts to actually get the boards made.

>>55755578
bookmarked, thank you.

>>55756330
I think I'd heard of Eagle by people from my last job, but I hadn't looked into it yet so I forgot about it. thank you for the suggestion!

>>55756548
because most engineering degree are a funcking meme nowadays.

>>55754409
Eagle is good like other anons are reccomending, at least for DIY stuff.

Advanced circuits is good for ordering since you can get more for cheaper. OSH park is a ripoff but user friendly, maybe I would reccomend it for your first prototype if it's small

>>55757397
Mine wasn't. We built a damned computer out of a custom PCB, some old DIP memory, and an 8086.

>>55757397
>engineering degree
you mean all degrees

I graduated a biology science degree with credit avg marks, I could go and analyse as many shitty journal articles as you want but I sure as shit couldn't tell you any ecological field techniques or cell biology lab techniques.

I learned to program myself, and I have a software dev job. There are other people in my office that have full masters in computer science that can't code or design software for shit, let alone understanding how to lead a team of devs or handling clients. But they can tell you all about Big O characteristics for STL algos, which is great, until you realise that all the documentation for any STL algos mentions their computational complexity in lay terms anyway.

I know fuck all about EE, but I watch EEVblog for whatever reason. He's shown probably everything there, including a lot how to get stuff made to order, but I remember that he nigrigged his own photoetching at home. Was a pretty near process, not too dissimilar from home photo developing as I remember.

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>>55754409
eagle is pretty good desu. also friendly tip, ALWAYS use fiberglass PCB sub-straight, the paper phenolic shit that you see most common on ebay from china is terrible.
pic related is on paper phenolic and the traces started to peel off during soldering

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>>55758102
substrate.

>>55758085
shit's messy as fuck and potentially more expensive than just getting your boards made and shipped.

Of course, it's faster and you might find it more fun.

>>55758122
not really, get a flask and stopper to store the acid and the drain cleaner and washing soda can be dumped down the drain when your done. if you use cupric chloride for etching you never have to dispose of it, just add oxygen ether through aeration or H2O2.

>>55758122
I assume it's done for prototyping?