In the beginning
There are some developments in this Hobby which sometimes pushes me beyond the edge and I am not talking about comfort zone. For over more than a decade, I have witness my own development in terms of PCB design and the final products. From basic marker etching to using photolithograhy using software, printouts and positive films, and then to professional standards that costs me. I was grateful for the learning experience at that time but somehow, after the euphoria, I felt that there is more to this. By this time, I more or less felt that something is stopping me from going further. This was because my circuits are ‘expanding’ and I always stubbornly believe that a good PCB design does not require any white jumper cables soldered into it.
JLCPCB.com
Then I discovered JLCPCB which offers double-sided design and plated through-holes as standard. These two features allowed me to not only connect on both sides of the board but also, cram more components into the same board footprint. The best part? I can order the PCBs for around USD2.00 for the first five. This allows me to test the board before I finalise it and go for actual production. Throughout the years, for the same price, JLCPCB not only allows the board to made with certain thickness but allows you to get the board in different colours, a nice feature which they later came up with coloured silk screening. At the same time, there is also the option of getting board made as flexiPCB. Although it was an old technology but with JLCPCB offering it as standard feature, this revolutionary breakthrough allows my design to conform to the internal curves of a model or casing, freeing me from seeing the PCB as some solid sheets of fibreglass.
Custom Shapes
And now, here we are. I am revising my Blade Runner PCB design where the front mandibles are concerned. More than two years ago, the design was good but I forgot to dry fit the part to the main body. So, I had to redesign the PCB again. The main challenge was that the PCB software, EaglepCB was not that flexible when it comes to curves. It does more or less allow you to create the shape you need but it is unable to ‘let ‘glue’ every to line become part of that shape. In other words, you can either do a circle or a weird rectangular shape just as long as each line locks.
Creating the Shape in InkScape
The first thing is to create the shape of the PCB and I used InkScape for this. You can follow a lot of Tutorials from the Internet. I followed Lucadentella.
Importing the .DXF File into EaglePCB
The only way to test if the design works is to import the .dxf file via EaglePCB. To do that, at the Eagle’s Board Layout, I executed the ULP file, DXF.ULP.
