Well, here are some pics of my PCB. Worst PCB ever!! Yet, I have to make do with it. 😦 Sad isn’t it ?
It’s the most pathetic board I have ever seen. At first glance, it misses your naked eye, but on closer inspection or when using your Multimeter, you find out that all the traces that are not supposed to be in contact are in-fact touching. Sadly for me, I noticed this after having soldered a couple of IC’s in. For a while I thought the problem was with the solder itself. After several attempts to set it right, I had a hunch that the tracks itself could be touching each other. And man, was my hunch right. Almost every track was touching the other track!! And I had to use a Swiss Army Knife to remove the copper between tracks 😦 Imagine!!
(IC’s in place)
(IC’s and a few wires. Takes longer than you can imagine)
(Flipsyde)
The original idea was to make my own PCB. But I couldn’t find my drilling machine and to be honest, it involves a lot more effort. I would have used a breadboard, but then one of my IC’s refused to sit in it.
SK KD BLAG 
Been following this blog for sometime now. Did I miss or what. You never mentioned what you’re tryin to make ?
Anyways, the PCB doesnt look that bad. Believe me, I’ve seen worse.
Hey Karthik, my project too involves a circuit. One thing said by my guide was like if you don’t rub the copper side with the sandpaper, it wouldn’t solder properly it seems. is it so?
@Jeff,
Nice to know that people read my blog. 🙂
The circuit is to control a robot and yea, I didn’t mention anything about it. 🙂
About the PCB, it was a big let down. The manufacturers of that board should have taken more care to make sure that traces did not touch each other. Even the Neutral and +V traces that run all over the board touch each other at many points, making it useless
I didn’t do it myself entirely. That explains the wires. If I had done the PCB from scratch, it should have been better.
@Rachel,
Nice to know you are using a circuit. 🙂
As for using sand paper, I wouldn’t suggest it. The copper has to be scrubbed just a wee bit so that the oxidised copper is removed. I think ScothBrite (dry!!) should do the job without much abrasion.
The sand paper leaves microscopic holes on the board which actually makes it more harder to solder. If you used very fine carborundum, then there might not have been too many issues.
After, our sem project gets over. Either i can mail you or put a post in my blog regarding my project, quite interesting stuff, which involves both hardware and software. It’s all about ECG.
Sadly we got only partial output, not the full one. Anyway i think partial o/p is more than enough for AU.
Its a bit technical. I have nothing to say 😀
What the guy above said.
@Rachel,
Yea sure. But there’s this girls batch in my class aswell who are doing something similar. Well, I don’t know wxactly what you are doing and I don’t know what they are doing either 😛 , but if I remember correctly, it was something to do with ECG wireless monitoring or something.
Karthik, the specialty of my project is that the circuit was designed by my guide itself and he’s got an U.S patent for it, so now the Americans are trying to build the right interface on the software side to suite the circuit created by him. If it goes well with circuit, they’ll publish the product.
@Marc, i guess Gowtham told like that coz we guys are talking about circuit and things so on.
What I said was not a question. It was a statement. I was repeating what Gowtham said.
@Marc, okay i got ya.
same as marc!!! 😉
@Rachel,
Nice. Your guide must be good then. Project centre or someone you know ?
@Vivek,
Never say same as Marc. You will be in a lot of trouble. Never follow his lead. Never, ever!! 😉
@Karthik, not a project center man, he’s a professor we came to know him through one of my batch mate.
y champ???
all i said was wht marc said was correct…and i second it
@marc
what were u trying to say???explain!!! 😛
@Rachel,
That’s great. You are among the fortunate few then. 🙂
@Vivek,
Summa, kidding ofcourse. And he didn’t say much here did he. 🙂