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VIA' in home pcb work

for a while now I have been doing double sided layouts and single sided boards - with the component traces tracked with jumper wire.

I am now trying to do a TRUE double sided board and I wondered how you folks handled vias?

I am thinking I should follow the same approach except that I would run the wire through the hold and simply solder both ends?. Actually I bend the wire and solder it to the trace at both ends.

Messy but it seems to hold for now. Vias for signal traces are about 16mil in diameter. I drill the hole with a 17.7mil drill bit. I am thinking I should look for "thicker" jumper wire (instead of the 26awg) to stuff through the hole such that it holds and I can snip off both ends and solder it cleanly without having the bend it unto the trace

Any of my gibberish making sense? Maybe Ill post a link to a picture later

Reply to
samiam
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I sometimes use a PCB milling machine to manufacture low volume, quick turn around prototypes. When I need to make double sided boards, I try and keep as many of the traces as possible on the bottom of the board, and use eyelets, soldered on both sides of the board, to make the top side interconnections. Vector and Keystone sell the eyelets, and tools to swage them into the board.

Usually, I just send my artwork out and have the boards made. The quick turn around PCB market is extremely hungry and competitive.

-Chuck

Reply to
Chuck Harris

Thanks Chuck. Can you recommend some manufacturers? Alas it would rob me of the job of both designing and building (1 out of 2 is enough?).

I heard of a PCB house in Romania. Ideally Id like to start with reasonable PCB houses in the good old USA, if the difference between prices doesnt exceed $20 ;)

Thanks again

Reply to
samiam

Bulgaria

Ideally Id like to start with

It will.

Olimex, in Bulgaria, makes crude, but good enough double sided, plated through, boards with silkscreen, and solder mask for $33 for a 6"x9" board. It costs about $10 to ship them home. They will put as many boards as you can fit on that panel, and depanelize them for free.

-Chuck

Reply to
Chuck Harris

That's what lots of people do, yes.

Reply to
Lionel

As Chuck said, handing this off to a fab house should be considered. The relative economics are debated in these groups on a regular basis.

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*-*-*-*-come-and-go-*-*-*+pcbcart+long-term-relationship+slow+batchpcb+waive+barebonespcb+Shanghai+PCBex+*-quality+futurlec

If you use an autorouter, learn about keepout.

If you still feel compelled to DIY:

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Reply to
JeffM

That's the way we used to do it before we counted the time we took into the cost of the PCB. Still useful for hobby purposes, but if you have the cash and better things to do with your time, the cheap prototype houses (e.g. PCB Pool or Newbury Electronics in the UK) are the way to go. Between about 1985 and 2000, we swallowed hard and got a batch made, then if it wasn't TOO bad, added the little wiggly wires to make it work before sending it out.

Paul Burke

Reply to
Paul Burke

"samiam" a écrit dans le message de news: Tj1Dh.161252$ snipped-for-privacy@fe08.news.easynews.com...

A long time ago, prior to discover that it's easy and no so expensive to order PTH boards on the net, I used to etch my double-side PCBs at home too. For the vias I used the following method that could be helpful to others :

- drill the holes with the smaller diameter you can

- put the pcb on a rigid foam, like the antistatic foam used to store DIL chips. This is the trick...

- using a small unisolated wire (like wrapping-style wire), put the wire in each via hole of the pcb, plug it in the foam, and cut it 5mm above the PCB. That way the wire is kept in place... Do it for all vias and leave the small wires vertical

- Then solder each via on this side (but don't cut the wires...)

- Then remove the PCB from the foam, reverse it and plus it back on the foam. That way the wires are now kept in place by the foam, soldered face down, this will help in the next phase...

- then solder the vias on the second face, as quickly as possible in older to limit the flowing of the solder on the bottom face

- Then remove the foam and cut all via wires on both faces.

Quite long to explain (especially for a non-english native like me) but quite efficient.

Cheers, Robert

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Reply to
Robert Lacoste

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