Design and make your own PCB

I found this link...looks cool and has free software for designing PCB boards.
Price is reasonable as well!

Express PCB

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Robinson on August 2, 2010 at 9:03am
Express PCB, Sunstone Circuits, BatchPCB. They all are approximately equal on quality. I use Sunstone when I need it fast and BatchPCB if it's something I'm not too worried about.

Home etching boards is great for people who do not value their time or sanity and who enjoy keeping vats of nitric acid laying around and permanently staining their sink.

Surface mount is the way to go. Through-hole stuff is quickly becoming obsolete Invest in a quality soldering iron, a heat gun, and a toaster oven and you have a complete surface mount solution.

Even leadless QFN packages with tight pitches are pretty simple when you have the right tools. When rework is needed simply take a heat-gun to the board and everything becomes butter. I've even removed the big TO-252 style MOSFETs on the ESCs with the heat-gun without melting the wire next to them. 30 seconds of heat and you can pick things off with tweezers like they weren't even held down.

... just my 2c though.
Permalink Reply by Andrew Robinson on August 2, 2010 at 9:05am
You're getting a bargain ordering it from diydrones. They have (semi)mass production on their side. Producing it yourself is going to cost the same if not more, even if you're using Batch PCB and you're not factoring the amount of time and hassle mounting all those surface mount accelerometers and gyros will cost you + troubleshooting when it inadvertently doesn't work right.
Permalink Reply by hpux on August 2, 2010 at 9:17am
Agreed. This is all good data.

I HATE drilling holes! SMT forever!
Permalink Reply by bGatti on August 2, 2010 at 9:38am
Again to disagree,
SMT really simplifies DIY board making. Without those pesky holes to drill, the board comes out ready to solder. As for placing pieces, if you can etch it, you can probably solder it.
I only do single-sided boards (CNC). If the circuit is too complicated for a 1 side, I send it out, but Arduino is single side compatible, so you can do a lot with one side.
Soldering SMT is not difficult - provided you have solder wick, flux, and temp control. SMT doesn't have to mean really tight pins (in the way that through hole does mean - ~.1 pin spacing)
If one could convince Eagle to use backplane for ground only (and place GRN vias) that would be sweet.
Permalink Reply by Andrew Robinson on August 2, 2010 at 9:40am
That wouldn't be a problem in Eagle if you're manually routing right? I can't think of any reason Eagle would disallow this.
Permalink Reply by bGatti on August 2, 2010 at 1:45pm
Uh Kinda.

I can't get Eagle to recognize a polygon on backside as a signal, airwires in the GRD net are not satisfied by attaching to vias into a RECT on Bottom.
However; yes, eagle can be used to layout the required patterns.
Permalink Reply by hpux on August 2, 2010 at 1:51pm
You're definitely using a polygon, not a rectangle?

A rectangle doesn't work like a poly.

You absolutely should be able to make a polygon and assign it a signal name. The airwires should work fine. I do this as a matter of course. I wonder what's different? In fact, I make large polygon pours on top and bottom and assign them to gnd. every signal wire is cut out of those ground planes.

DeveloperPermalink Reply by Michael Smith on August 2, 2010 at 3:57pm
It's probably best to point out that you're the operator of the service you're advertising.

Also, you might want to fix your cut-and-paste macro; 'cheap' only has one 'e'.

http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/showpost.php?p=60769&po...
Permalink Reply by roseibarry on October 9, 2015 at 3:08am

I am agree with James. Express PCB really have free software for designing PCB boards. But I usually depending upon some PCB manufacturing company for Assembly & fabrication. They have a very good turnaround time as less as 24 hour. Even they are very responsive too.

Permalink Reply by Jay Rogers on October 22, 2015 at 7:02am

I may save some money by this way, but what about the quality of PCBs made by this way?

Permalink Reply by Tim on October 29, 2015 at 2:04am

I have 10 years of experience with this kind of PCB manufacturing industry but I really don't found any inconvenience with my PCB product quality. Even I found them very supportive.

Permalink Reply by Jay Rogers on November 18, 2015 at 4:27am

Hey,

I know that its a long time since the discussion started. I just want to know whether the software is still working? And Are there any tool for PCB designing.

I am working in a company of pcb manufacturing. And I want some new tools.

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