Homebrew PCBs

Dear Trevor White 

  with regards to your question about 4 layer boards (which are easily 4 times more expensive to have made,in my experience, than double sided ones....), are you a hobbyist or professional? Because if you are a professional, the price (almost !) does/should not matter.....

  If you are Hobbyist, then you should give some thought to redesigning the board for double layer, even if its a bit bigger because of that.... Fault finding on 4 layer PCBs is not for the faint hearted either and repairs can be a nightmare.....

  If you are developing something privately, for maybe later selling, may I still suggest that until the design is working perfectly, that you stay with double layer, get some experience with that and when you really go for "IT", do the 4 layer design. You may get some new problems but YOU WILL KNOW EXACTLY WHY!!! Which is like money in the bank!!!

  I would be most interested in learning why (if) you feel that a 4 layer is the only way to go in your particular case......

  (I have to admit that my personal (not business I hasten to add, we used multilayer pcbs all the time there) PCB level is far less complicated than yours, I design using my PCB software at first double sided (my old software makes a mess/gives up when telling it to design single sided!) and then try and redesign by hand to fit a single sided PCB - it appears that I like wire links a lot!!! Or better said, they do not bother me at all......I can usually manage to get probably 90% of my designs (thats probably between 4 and 8 boards a year!!) onto single sided - not that I am anticipating you changing a 4 level design to ever fit single sided PCB, that was NOT my meaning!! Double at least I would still guess.....)

  Stay well and regards from

  Andy

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