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Circuit Boards

A project log for RGB LED Panel, Basic and Bright

A quick and simple flood light panel because I was disappointed in commercial options.

quinnQuinn 02/12/2024 at 21:520 Comments

To connect things, I hand made a couple circuit boards. This would make for a simple and clean assembly, minimizing wires, while also serving as mounting.

I do schematics and layout as part of my paid just, so usually try to do things differently for hobby projects.  In this case, I designed and cut it by hand, without schematic

I used some copper clad fiberglass board, and hand cut the needed traces.  Holes were all drilled.

For the main board, I used 0.063" single sided to provide some rigidity.  I only needed a single side, and not having the second meant I didn't need to create isolation.

For the second board, I planned on using dual sided 0.032, and single sided 0.010".  After cutting traces and drilling, these would be glued together into a mixed stackup 3 layer board.  While that sounds complex, the need for 4 parallel wired connections made the simpler then a more complicated layout to cut.  The extra layer can be thought of as simply a wire added on.

It would be cleaner to have these boards made (costing a bunch more for shipping), or etch one, but the time to create components in a library, do schematics, route, and then make it would have been longer.  

This process took less than 2hr, requiring only a hobby knife, ruler, scribe(or pencil), punch and drill. As it was so basic I never drew schematics or anything.

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