Homebrew PCBs

On 05/09/2009, at 7:06 AM, Daniel Johnson wrote:

> Interesting problem.
>
> Try loading the eagle PDF into inkscape and have a look at it.

Well, if it looks fine in Illustrator (and Preview) I'm pretty  
confident the PDF does not have whatever it is that the direct to- 
printer. What I did notice only when I'd uploaded the images (made  
much more obvious by the scanner's auto-sharpen) is that every fill is  
offset a little to the lower left to the outlines ...

I did try eagle -> PDF -> some other app -> Print and ... the smear is  
gone, although something else has happened to drill holes - I'm lucky  
enough to have Illustrator, I think I'll be sticking to that route!

> I make solder paste stencils by printing the tcream layer in eagle.   
> Next I load it into inkscape and then switch to the outline view.  
> The files is saved as a SVG and then cut on a critcut machine.
>
> A PCB like the one in your example can be easily cut.  I am still  
> working on finer pitch parts like TQFP.

That would be nice, but it also etched just fine, my first flirtation  
with 10mil traces and running things under SMD parts. Infuriatingly, i  
managed to break a trace with the drill chuck ...

PG