How to Turn Custom Artwork into Fun and Functional Electronic Circuit Boards!

Converting a schematic to PCB can be done using the Convert to PCB., but if you do modifications to the schematic, by using the Update PCB button you can immediately be passed forward to update the selected PCB without having the PCB editor window already open or without creating a new PCB file. OpenMV PCB Project Used Altium Designer 20; OPENMV is an open source project abroad, MIT agreement allows anyone to use modified copy to sell, pay tribute to the original author Ibrahim Abdelkader & Kwabena W.

I can't seem to get the.PCB file open which appears to be created in a P-CAD softare. I can open the LGR files and the DRL file. None of the viewers i've used online or downloaded will open this file up. I am assuming I need to open the.PCB file in order to export modern day gerber files so the board house can create this board. PCB file extension is used by operating systems to recognize files with content of type PCB. Here is some information which will get you started. How to Open PCB file. To see if you have an application which support PCB file format you need to double click on the file. This will either open it with matching application or Windows will suggest. All open fine, I can open schematics, everything is good, but PCBs won't open? I thought maybe something is missing, but I SEE the files in the project directories, and CircuitStudio SHOWS the PCB file in the directory tree, but when I click on it, nothing happens.

Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) are literally all around us: nearly every consumer electronic good contains a PCB, and more and more we see people designing their own to use in their DIY electronics projects — I’ve certainly designed a few myself for all kinds of funky projects!

When I started working on ng-beacon, I realized that you could do even more with PCBs: you could make them “art,” too! This led to designing a heart-shaped keychain light for my girlfriend’s birthday, as well as an ‘angry panda’ I made for my friend Pavel 'PK' Kaminsky (meant to resemble the logo of his CrossFit club):

But why would you want to make art out of a PCB?

Well, for starters, they are dirt cheap to have made (they can get as low as $5 for a batch, even including worldwide shipping), and the manufacturing process includes many steps and processes we can take advantage of in our designs. If you wanted to build them yourself — ordering a CNC machine, silk screen, etc. — you’d be spending quite a lot on setup, but the nice thing about PCBs is that you can have them made for you with everything included for very affordable price with a streamlined ordering process.

Can T Open Pub File

Beyond the logistical advantages, custom art PCBs can make great gifts, conference badges, or “smart decorations” — not to mention they can make your next electronics project look that much cooler. And isn’t engineering in part about combining function with form?

When I was beginning to play around with PCB art, I discovered that there weren’t any good end-to-end tutorials which took you from a graphics file through all the steps to get a manufactured PCB. So, I experimented with different tools and methods, and decided to write my own!

PCBs 101

Before we dive in, let’s first take a moment to get a grip on what exactly makes up a PCB, and what happens during the PCB manufacturing process. Having a good understanding of what we’re working with will give us a better idea of what crazy fun things we can do with them!

What’s in a PCB?

You can think of a PCB like a hacker sandwich: PCBs are essentially a bunch of materials pressed together and etched/marked so that, when pieces are soldered to them in the correct way, they do what we want them to.

The base material is called “FR4,” which is a kind of fiberglass with green-yellow color. On top of that (and sometimes on both sides!) there is a copper layer, which serves as the board’s conductor, replacing the wires you’d otherwise need between the components. This is then plated with either a thin solder, a process called HASL, or thin gold layer, a process called ENIG — this plating is what makes PCBs easier to solder, as well as ensures that the copper in your board doesn’t corrode.

Next, we have the “solder mask.” This solder mask is what helps us make sure we’re soldering our components to the correct places, and that the current between them goes where we want it to (and importantly, not where we don’t!). The solder mask is also what gives the PCBs their color:

Common colors for solder masks include red, green, yellow, blue, black, white, and purple. As you can see in the photo above, however, there’s also some lettering and design on top of the solder mask. This is the “silk screen” layer (which is now most often laser or ink jet printed instead of literally silk screened), which is usually white, unless you’re printing on a white board (in which case it’s black).

The silk screen is traditionally used to mark where various components go and what they’re supposed to do, but in our case they can also help us make the most out of our artwork!

So to take my Panda as an example, we start with a piece of FR4, add a copper layer, and then plate it with a solder (HASL) finish, which you can see it on the nose / tongue which has a metallic shiny finish.

On top of that, there’s a the black solder mask — everything black you see above is actually the solder mask. Finally, I used the white silk screen to make the panda’s face, and I also used it to print the GitHub URL on its back:

If you look closely at the top side, however, you will notice there are actually two different shades of silk screen: there is a slightly darker shade on the side of the face. I achieved this by using a copper layer below the silk screen, which will give the silk screen a slightly darker shade.

If you’d like to learn a little more detail about what makes up a PCB, SparkFun has a nice article about it.

How are PCBs Manufactured?

A detailed look into the PCB manufacturing process could take up a whole post all by itself, but in order to get started making PCB art, we (thankfully) just need the basics.

Essentially manufacturing a PCB comprises of the following broad steps:

How To Open .pcb File In Orcad

Transfer the PCB design to photo film(s). This process can happen in a number of different ways depending on the type of process the manufacturer chooses to use, but basically it involves printing the desired PCB schema onto one or more films which will then be transferred onto the actual board, with different films for each layer of the PCB.
Transfer design from film(s) onto the copper. This is actually a pretty complicated, multi-step process, but the general idea is that you clean the copper, transfer over the design from the photo films, zap it with UV light to keep the copper you want, wash away the unwanted copper with chemicals, and then use a combination of fusing, drilling and plating to make sure the PCB can conduct electricity the way we want it to.
Apply the solder mask. Again, the manufacturer uses special inks and UV lights to apply the solder mask to the board, which is then cured in an oven.
Apply the surface finish. In order to ensure easy solderability, the manufacturer will chemically plate the PCB with gold or silver, which attaches itself to the copper exposed from the solder mask.
Silkscreen the PCB. This is when the relevant electrical information is printed onto the PCB, or in our case, where we have an opportunity to add a bit more design!
Test and cut. Finally, before the PCB gets shipped out to the users, the manufacturer will test the actual circuits in the PCB, and then cut out the individual boards from the group in which they were made.

The above is a very abridged version of the PCB manufacturing process, which can be rather complex! Still, it’s not so complex that people don’t occasionally make their own PCBs, but for our purposes, we’ll stick with established manufacturers.

For a more detailed explanation of the process, this video does a pretty good job, as does this walkthrough from PCBCart.

From Digital Art to Physical Object: DiY PCB

So now we know how PCBs are made, let’s make one! We will use the heart example — which is slightly easier — and then I will give you some hints about the Panda one (if you want to try it).

For our walkthrough, we’ll only use free tools: Inkscape, KiCad, and a python script called svg2mod.

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor — similar to Adobe Illustrator. In fact, if you have an Illustrator vector file, and want to use it as a ba

Can't Open Pcb File