First PCB

Creating your first printed circuit board (PCB) can be difficult because it requires some knowledge of circuits and PCB design before you can even begin to fabricate the board. This guide walks you through how to fabricate a PCB once it has already been designed, but gives some resources to learn about PCB design. 

PCB Design with Eagle

The board used in this tutorial is a blinky board based off this three part YouTube tutorial:

If you follow this tutorial, I recommend making it a single-sided board because that will be easier to manufacture for our laser.

This is a pretty time intensive tutorial, though very useful for learning PCB design. If you do not want to make the design, the gerber files for a single-sided version are here. 

Making a single-sided PCB

Prepping the board

Before placing the board in the machine, it is helpful to clean the copper with scotch brite then isopropyl alcohol in the area that you are going to make the board.  

Starting up the machine

Begin by pressing the power button on the machine.

Once it turns on, open LPKF circuit pro on the computer.

The program will ask you if the signal lights are working, check that the three lights are on and select yes

New

Now we must convert our PCB Gerber file into a format the machine can use to manufacture. Under the New tab, we must select the desired template.

Material

Next, you will need to select the material and size that will be used to make your board

The material used for this tutorial will be FR4 

We then have to specify between the different thicknesses that the board could be, 18 or 35 microns thick of copper

Import

Under the Import tab, add all of your Gerber files.

The machine can also take DXF's but we will use Gerber files. 

The machine doesn’t need and cannot process all of these files, so we will uncheck any extraneous information 

We will uncheck any SolderPaste, SolderMask or Silkscreen files because the laser cannot process those. 


For this board you only need the copper_top and profile files. 

If it was a double sided board, you'd need the copper_bottom file and if there were through holes, there would be a drill file. 

Change the Target for the copper_top and profile to TopLayer and BoardOutline respectively. 

Layout

Now we are in the layout section, if you want to toggle the visibility of any layers, right click the layer on the right side bar and uncheck visibility.

If you had a double sided board, here is where you would add Fiducials. Keep in mind that Fiducials must be 2mm from the edge of the board

Under this tab, you can rotate the board if desired. 

Scan Fields

Now go to the Scan Fields tab and click Compute scan fields.

A scan field is the area that the laser can reach without moving the table only by moving the mirrors inside the laser 

This laser has a 50mm by 50mm square scan field, so if your board will not fit in a 50x50mm square, then the board must be completed in several scan fields

If your board is bigger than 50x50mm then it is recommended that you change the scan field size to 40x40mm.

The board in this tutorial is small enough so we will leave it at 50x50mm. 

← The board in this tutorial should be small enough to fit in just one scan field.  

For reference, this is a larger board that needs multiple scan fields.  →


Tools

Now select Tools


All of the tools can be seen on the right bar. 

Generally you do not want to change the tools unless you know you need to and have done some tests before using the new settings on your board. 

Talk to a staff member if you feel something needs to be changed. 

One tool that we are going to change is the Cut Material tool. 

Select the Cut Material tool and change the number of Repetitions to 30 on both Task 1 and Task 2. 

Then click Apply. 

Workflow

You do not need to do much here unless you want to skip a certain process or start from a certain point, not at the beginning.

Toolpaths

Now change to the Toolpaths tab and select Compute Toolpaths.

Then you will see the toolpaths needed to make the board.

Processing

Next move on the to Processing tab. Here we want to place where we want to cut out our PCB on the bed. 

First measure the thickness of your material. 

Then slide the door open and place your material on the bed. 

It is recommended that you wear gloves while handling the material. 

If you double click somewhere on the board, the red marker will be placed there. The laser will move so the red pointer is on the spot that you selected. 

To move the board on the bed, right click on the PCB and select placement. 

Move the placement window to the side, and click and drag to move the board around. 

Place the board in a spot that will help minimize material waste and avoids any missing pieces on the FR4 board. 

Then click Apply. 

At this point, click Save!

Next click Start Production 

It will ask you to mount the material, but you should've already done so, so click OK.

Then input the material thickness that you measured earlier. 

Skip the the test tool settings option by clicking Resume.

Note, for a very large board you may want to run the small test.  

Now you can watch the production of your board!

It starts by tracing the outline of your traces and pads. 

Then it begins hatching, which means it cuts all the material it wants to get rid of into strips.

Then it applies heat to remove the strips and then blows the strips out of the way. 

Lastly, it will cut the outline of your board. 

Once your board is done, remove the material using gloves and break the PCB out of the material. It can be a little difficult at times so ask a staff member for help if you cannot break it out. 

Congrats, you just made a PCB!