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PCBrulerS

A small PCB ruler with a mm, a 1/8 and 1/10 inch ruler.

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A small (100x32mm / 3.94x1,26in) PCB ruler made in KiCAD.
It has a millimeter, a 1/8 and a 1/10 inch ruler, furthermore a protractor (for roughly angle measuring).
Also this ruler helps you, when you want to create a PCB, because you can see different trace width and drill hole sizes in real life.
Additionally this ruler has a bottle opener xD

Features:

  • Quite small form factor (100x32mm or 3.94x1.26in), so its portable and it can be manufactured very cheap (you can panalize the design, so you can make two rulers per PCB)
  • Metric Scale (mm) and two Imperial Scales with different subdivisions: 1/8 inches on one side, 1/10 inches on the other.
  • Degree scale (6° per line), so you can (roughly) measure and draw angles.
  • Different rounding (1, 2, 3mm arcs and 90°) on corners, so you can predict how it looks when you design a PCB's corners.
  • Important formulas and unit conversions: Voltage Divider formula, Unit definitons for Resistor, Capacitor and Inductivity. Conversion between inch and cm and mil and mm. Additionally the most important angle values in degrees and radiants.
  • Resitor Color Code Table
  • A table with different trace widths (1/4 with soldermask, 2/4 without) and its widths in mm and mils. Also the table shows the maximum current capacity of the traces for a temperature increase of 10K and 50K.
  • Different drill holes without copper and sizes in mm and mil on the top, on the bottom holes with copper, sizes in AWG and the maximum current for vias of this size.
  • Three different pitches (2.54mm, 1.27mm and 2.00mm)
  • Different font sizes in mm and mils.
  • Important Footprints (KiCAD style): 1206 - 0402, TQFP32, SOD323, SOT23/SOT23-5, SOT223, SMA, SMB, SOIC8, TSSOP16, D-PAK. QFN28, SOT89, SC70, HC49, WS2812 and BGA16.
  • 5mm hole for keychain attachment or easy attachment on wall hooks.
  • Bottle opener
  • Licensed und Creative Commons BY 4.0

explaination.pdf

This pdf shows the different features of the PCB Ruler.

Adobe Portable Document Format - 1.09 MB - 06/15/2017 at 13:28

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  • First Entry

    Jan B.06/15/2017 at 14:00 1 comment

    Hello everybody,

    the idea behind this project is to create a more universal and more "metric" PCB ruler (e.g. the Adafruit PCB ruler does not have this much features and almost all informations are in inches only. The drill holes are even only in AWG, which KiCAD cannot use...).

    The next days I will try to improve the ruler more, so I can order some prototypes someday xD

    If you have some ideas for improvements or more features, comment here or send me a message.

    If there is demand I could design some bigger versions of the Ruler. (But then I need some hints, where I can order long pcb (over 10cm) cheap, too xD)

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Discussions

Yann Guidon / YGDES wrote 08/04/2018 at 02:31 point

PCB rulers are pretty usual novelty give-aways at professional trade shows, I have some on my desk for a decade now :-)

  Are you sure? yes | no

Yann Guidon / YGDES wrote 08/04/2018 at 02:33 point

They are often used to brag about the quality, finish and width of the traces and vias they can produce, that's why you'll find nice layouts with ultrathin traces.

  Are you sure? yes | no

K.C. Lee wrote 08/03/2018 at 12:39 point

  Are you sure? yes | no

Jan wrote 08/03/2018 at 12:47 point

Ah come on. Don't be so harsh. You can always buy stuff cheaper somewhere. They're making thousands of them, of course they are cheap.

Jan puts it under Creative Commons BY 4.0. I guess he won't sell them. Just because you (and maybe me) can't use the info on the ruler doesn't mean no one may find it useful!

Edit: That bottle opener won't last too long I guess :)

  Are you sure? yes | no

K.C. Lee wrote 08/03/2018 at 14:28 point

They are novelty items only.  Rulers are pretty useless when you already are using CAD.  :P  Online calculator > formula  

I got a ruler from Vishay with their MOSFET soldered on from D2PAK all the way down to SC-89, PowerPAK to ChipFET.  muRata one is a laminated card with actual parts from 2220 to 0201.  I think the card is better.

  Are you sure? yes | no

K.C. Lee wrote 08/03/2018 at 12:18 point

You seem to be just putting things on the ruler with no consideration of the target users.

If it were for beginners, then SMT footprints, track width makes no sense to them.

If the person knows enough, then simple voltage divider, resistor charts are useless.

Why would someone want SMT footprint and old through hole colour chart?  SMT parts have either values printed on them or none at all for caps and smaller packages.  None of them uses colour chart.

Resistor colour chart is pretty useless on a PCB...  You want colours for colour chart.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Tindie wrote 07/11/2017 at 18:52 point

People love rulers on Tindie. :)

  Are you sure? yes | no

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