Ever wanted to pretend you're an engineer? Thought what it must be like to design cool stuff and have it manafactured for you?
No?
Oh...
Well, too bad, I'm not stopping!
Everybody's seen those cool green circuit boards (PCB's) that are found in pretty much anything nowadays. Pop the cover off your computer case (if your computer even *has* a cover) and you'll be greated with a stack of them. Sometimes they'll be other colors, such as red or blue, but they'll all be peppered with a multitude of tiny bits and pieces and a couple of bigger chunks.
Very cool, but just another one of those marvelous things that highly trained engineers design and build - with there millions of dollars and labs bristling with the latest technology. "I wonder how they're made, must cost a fortune! They make millions of 'em though, that's how they get their money back."
But we live in the age of the internet, all the knowledge you could possibly want comes in over a couple wires that end in the glowing portal in front of you. It's actually quite possible to design and create these kinds of circuit boards yourself! In the following posts I hope to walk you through designing and bringing to life a simple circuit board. I'll let Google fill in the gaps, but I'm hoping to cover all the basics and give you enough information to "do-it-yourself." Comments welcome!
Posted by Boone at March 1, 2006 09:38 PM