Re: Board Design

On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:12:45 -0800 (PST), Suudy <petela@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Feb 27, 8:51 am, Rich Webb <bbew...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Why not do it yourself? It's really not that difficult in many cases.
For layouts that may be difficult (very low level, or high speed, or
RF) you would have to be prepared to be charged accordingly.

Part of the problem is I don't really know what I am doing
electronically. At least doing it right. I don't know what size
bypass capacitors are required and what (if any) termination resistors
are required. I don't even know why one would use an electrolytic cap
vs a tantalum vs a ceramic, etc. These are all choices that an
experience designer would know.

My experience is in RTL and firmware design. Not board design.

At least give it a try. Eagle has a free version that many have used
successfully. In the FOSS world there are gEDA and Kicad, both of
which are more than capable of doing schematic capture and board
layouts that can be sent off to a board house for single-, double-, or
multi-layered designs.

The other problem is that many of these software kits are lacking in
libraries. The parts I want to use are not available in Eagle (or
ExpressPCB or PCB123's software). And while I can create my own
parts, I'm not even sure the footprints I select/create will be
correct. And when I drop my $200-$300 to have the PCB's made, and I
can't solder the parts on....

Honestly, I have no idea how much it would cost to have a board made
for me. If what we budget for engineering time at our company is a
rule (about $65/hr), I imagine having and experienced person do the
schematic and layout couldn't take more than a couple of days. So I'm
looking at about $1k to have a board done for me (excluding the proto
build cost). And paying that extra amount seems a whole lot safer for
me.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to do it myself. But lacking
the electrical experience, I'm afraid I'll end up wasting more than
$1k just trying to get it right.

Maybe the better question is how to get a good review of the
electrical issues before sending it off to be built. And a review of
footprints before sending it off.

Thanks,
Pete

If you get an experienced designer in at $100 to $150/hr, you'll be
into the couple thousand $ range, unless your circuit is trivial. You
would learn a lot if you did this yourself. A 1 month project will
give you an equivalent of 2 years conventional schooling plus. As
someone said, post schematics and board layouts to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronics (ABSE). People will give lots of
comments. One chap did this on his switching power supply design
recently. He had lots of input. When you do this thru the use net, you
learn, we all learn.

You also become much more valuable at work with this knowledge. It's
really hard to deal with firmware folks if they don't understand
electronics!

---
Mark
.

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