I made two printed circuit boards (PCBs) in Fall of 2020 for an electronics class. The first of which was a power supply board, which takes 12 volts in, and regulates it into 3.3V and 5V pins which can be plugged into a breadboard.
I used KiCad to design the circuit, select the components, and layout the copper traces on the board. This project taught me a great deal about electronics and PCB design practices.
The board was fabricated by Oshpark.
A 3D rendering of the power supply board and the final product.
The next PCB I designed was an H-bridge motor driver, which allows a microcontroller to control a motor's speed and spin it in both directions. The board has three connection terminals: one which connects to the motor leads, one which connects to the microcontroller, and one which takes 12V power for the motor. It uses 6 transistors that control the flow of current through the motor.
Schematic for the H-Bridge PCB.
After designing the schematic and choosing footprints for my components, I got to work laying out the board and connecting the components with copper traces. This board was a lot more intricate than the power supply PCB so its design was much more challenging, requiring me to use multiple layers of copper traces and take more care in the placement of components. Additionally, some traces had to handle higher voltage so I had to carefully make some traces thicker to ensure they wouldn't melt.
I sent my design to Oshpark for fabrication. The makerspace at Tufts was mostly closed for Covid, so I was unable to solder my components to the board.
3D rendering of the H-Bridge PCB.
The fabricated H-Bridge.