I think the price of having pcb's made professionally has dropped so much that it's hardly worth etching ones own boards, unless their very basic.
I never liked traces to have right angles, and I liked to have tracks coming in to connector pads horizontally for connectors vertically orientated and vertically for horizontal connectors, but this is proably not very important when having pcb's etched professionally as the quality and resolution of thefinal board is much better than I could ever achieve etching my own boards. But it would allow for greater clearance between tracks and pads.
As for the tracks. I think years ago right angles were frowned on as etchant could eat away into the corner, it's just a practice I've kept with - laying a track across a right angle eliminates the corner.
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On 14 February 2011 14:29, josh_eeg
<josheeg@...> wrote:
?
I would like to try photoetching but dorkbot pdx and batch pcb do such a nice job for a decent price that I don't even know if it would be cost effective to get the stuff and do it at home.
--- In
kicad-users@..., "Anders Gustafsson" wrote:
>
> Ditto, having wider tracks and pads gives more leeway, especially as imperfections in the exposure-process tends to narrow stuff. This is for prototype etching. For layouts that I send off to PCB-houses, I make everything thinner.
>
> Ideally, there should be an option in PCBNew to "fatten" when poltting :)
>
> - Anders Gustafsson
> Engineer, CNE6, ASE
> Pedago, The Aaland Islands (N60 E20)
>
> phone +358 18 12060
> mobile +358 40506 7099
> fax +358 18 14060
>
>
>
> >>> Philip Vossler 2011-02-11 21:39 >>>
> I always tend to make pads, especially on connectors as large as I can, same
> with signal tracks. But I have always (up until very recently) had to etch
> my own boards
>
--
"Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles,
and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line."
BENOIT MANDELBROT
1924 ¡ª 2010
