• Creating the Badge

    Angela Sheehan02/11/2020 at 02:27 0 comments

    I had fun using this project as a way to gain more practice in AutoDesk EAGLE. 

    The first thing I did was draw a simplified rendering of the artwork in Illustrator with a condensed palette. The original artwork uses a few different shades of color:


    Trash Dove Kiss Facebook sticker, artwork by Sidney Weiler www.sydweiler.com/stickers

    Luckily, OSHPark's signature purple solder mask, ENIG, and white silk were already pretty good matches for the original sticker palette, so I just needed to make a few adjustments.

    I decided on three tones of purple created by:

    • Mask over FR4 for the back bird (darkest purple)
    • Mask over copper for the front bird's wing and head (lightest purple)
    • Mask over copper stripes for the front bird's body (mid purple)

    I used silk to define some details and for the back bird's head, and exposed copper for the orange yellow parts of the original artwork. 

    The heart I left open to backlight with a red LED.

    Design in Adobe Illustrator:

    After making some design decisions and dividing up the layers in Illustrator, I imported to EAGLE using Bradley Gawthrop's process. Check out the great tutorial on youtube: 

    Here are some snapshots of the layers from OSHPark's previews:

    Top Copper:

    Top Copper

    T Stop:

    Top Silk:

    Final preview:

    I was really happy with how the copper striping helped create that third purple tone, though some of my polygons imported distorted on the end of the tail. It looks like an accidental feather feature! I'm hoping to do a second prototype at some point to work out some of the alignment and importing adjustments, but I'm pleased with how this first try turned out.

    The circuit on the back of board is pretty simple:

    I'm looking forward to experimenting more with making art badges!