I finally learned how easy it was to associate and make footprints for my components, so I decided to start making my silly first project (a lab multimeter) and naturally started with the PSU. I thought.. Why not practise by making it its own mini-module kind of board?
Here's my resulting schematic fresh from Eagle:The frames were a little too large for just that, so hopefully my silly frame with the wire tool is not ugly or too wrong..
I liked my fuse tester, makes sense, and the p-mos has a -1.5Vgs threshold at 25C, so, easily attainable (5-0=-5V when fuse blown.)
Next, my PCB .. I went a little far on it as you may see:A few questions...
1. My designs check out on Lane's OSHPark DRC, but I am curious, would my silkscreen become blocky with its detail or will the machine be sharp enough to roughly make such a design as that? Would it work better if it were larger, I made it more sharper?
2. Am I free to abuse the pad layer to make some shiny text on my PCB? (top-right, the (c) et. al.) I just hit "approve" on the ERC's amusing mentioning of abusing it, or is there a way to lift the solder mask in key positions? If I want to make a test pad, do I just make a device with a pad without a drill hole?
3. Should I have left all GND connections out, and just do the fill after? The traces seem to be there and movable independent of the fill even though they just sink back in to it once placed, or is that fine?
4. Most of my LEDs/buttons/ etc. will be put on to leads and mounted on the front panel. Should I create dummy LEDs with jumper connections and alike, or just use the button/LED footprints as I am doing here and feed wires from them? That may actually help a bit with pinouts I suppose.
I hope I remembered all I was going to ask.
I don't like the gimmicky look of vector font for component designators (a board sitting in front of me of something else, it looks kinda .. trying too hard to look cool so I used proportional. Words though seem to look quite technical in vector font however.
Any tips? Are my silkscreen positions not too horrible? I love the puzzle of making a single-sided board, too, really not as hard as I thought.
Board roughly 2x1.5'', hope I increased the trace width for the power correctly but I suppose I should research curr..ampacity? No excuses! lets see.. 30.8 mil said for a calculator (1oz, 2A, in air) and mine is 24 mil, suppose I should increase that! Learning. Fun.
no more rambling.
TriodeTiger.