

Tutorial: Ordering EAGLE Designed Circuit Boards - cfinger
http://colinkarpfinger.com/blog/2010/ordering-pcbs-designed-with-eagle/

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noonespecial
I've had a lot of fun just drawing them myself on plain copper boards with
fine-tipped sharpies. They sell little bottles of the etcher at some Radio
Shacks but recently I've stepped up to ordering "Ammonium Persulfate" online
and using a laser printer and an iron to make my designs.

I guess once you've monkeyed with that a while you might want to step up to
something like this. It always seemed expensive and slow to me but I guess if
you want to use little surface mount stuff you'd have to.

Seems like soldering it all together once you get the boards is the hard part
in that scenario though.

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suraj
SMD's are easy if you have tweezers, a magnifying glass and clean soldering
iron. Take a look at this link <http://www.infidigm.net/articles/solder/>

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fuzzmeister
While I expect it could take years to get to the level of being able to design
an interesting IC, could anyone recommend some good online EE introductory
material?

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X-Istence
Take a look at the beginners offerings from <http://parallax.com/>. Stuff like
the boe-bot and others. They will allow you to get your feet wet with
electronics and circuit design.

After you have the basics down, you can start looking at the tutorials that
SparkFun has for example to get some basic circuits out, and building them,
learn how to solder (screwing up when you have 20 boards made is not that big
of a deal, buy SparkFun's broken boards and play with them, I learned how to
solder from my professor and have always had extremely neat boards).

Just take your time, and don't rush it. It is an absolutely blast to create
your first circuit with an LED and blink it with a microcontroller.

The one thing I will mention is, get ready to decipher all kinds of data
sheets to get the information you need so you don't accidentally burn up your
electronic parts.

~~~
blacksmythe

      >> so you don't accidentally burn up your electronic parts
    

The biggest thing to watch out for is incompatible voltage ranges (lots of
parts are 3.3V compatible, most parts are not 5V compatible).

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ladyada
also, <http://www.ladyada.net/wiki/pcbchecklist> (much less photogenic)

