[sdiy] home drilling via and trace sizes?

[Adam Schabtach]

On hand-etched boards I deliberately make the via pads much larger than
usual, which makes soldering the wire that actually forms the through-board
connection easier. I also mark all the holes in my pads with a very small
drill size that acts a little bit like a center-punch mark. I then drill the
hole with a very small bit since I use 30ga wire. Another thing that helps
is to flatten the just the end of the wire (like maybe about 0.05" of the
end) with a pair of pliers and bend the flat part so that it's perpendicular
to the rest of the wire. Then you can cut off a short piece, drop it into
the hole, and the flat part will keep the wire in place while you solder it.
It's still a little tricky, though; there's so little thermal mass involved
that often the first solder joint melts when I flip the board over and
solder the wire on the other side. I'm getting lazy and may start using
BatchPCB.com for all of my double-sided boards.

In any case, on the last board I hand-etched I used 0.07" pads for the vias
and 0.015" traces. This board was somewhat dense, though, and had e.g. a
microcontroller in a TQFP package.

--Adam 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl 
> [mailto:synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl] On Behalf Of Dan Snazelle
> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2008 3:53 PM
> To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> Subject: [sdiy] home drilling via and trace sizes?
> 
> 
> hey there
> happy to find that express pcb is working out pretty well (i 
> think) for making my small boards with press n peel.
> but i have been finding that the vias are a bit small for 
> home drilling (in other words, its easy to miss with my 
> dremel drill press)
> 
> so i was wondering what others have found to be good sizes 
> for traces and vias on HOME etched boards.
> 
> the boards  i am making dont need super dense traces so i 
> would much rather have less trouble with the drilling and 
> have good quality pads.
> 
> .080"?? for vias maybe?
> 
> thanks
> 
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------------
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> 
> http://www.myspace.com/lossnyc
> 
> 
> http://www.soundclick.com/lossnyc.htm
> 
> 
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> 
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