Customer Reviews

Build Your Own Printed Circuit Board

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Mr. Williams has provided a unique guide for the neophyte and experienced designer in the art of designing circuit boards on a shoestring. The book and accompanying CD contains everything required to gain proficiency in schematic capture and PC board layout. The book goes beyond design and provides the processes and procedures to interact with contract board houses to produce high quality professional circuit boards. I recommend this book to anyone involved in the design and fabrication of electronic circuits.

It is short and easy to learn the basics of creating schematics, layout, and producing gerber files with the EAGLE software only.
A free basic version of EAGLE software is included on the CD and it is good enough for learning purpose. The Book's title is "Build Your Own Printed Circuit Board" which I think is misleading. The book deals with just the EAGLE software and does not teach how to physically build a printed circuit board. For learning the EAGLE software, it is a good starting point.

You can screw it up a few times with incomplete internet guides or you can read this detailed account of the most popular techniques for manufacturing your own pcb's. You will probably figure it out either way, but the wasted money on pcb's and other materials will pay for simply buying the book!

I used the "laser printer" process and it worked perfectly, exactly as described. I even have my name and the name of the year "professionally" printed into the copper!

If you want to send to a board house and don't know exactly what to do, buy this book! The author describes the file types and layers that are expected, along with everything you need to know about gerber files and other formats.

The book is also well-structured for use as a reference. I found myself cross-referencing many times and specific passages were always found within a few seconds. Read it once and keep it around as a reference!

Good luck, I hope that you are as happy with the results as I am.

The book is OK although it totally leans toward Eagle software and doesn't say much else about other packages. The real downer is that the most important illustrations in the book are printed black on black on dark gray, like mud-on-mud graphics and you can't tell what's going on - at least in my copy. This is on the most important illustraions (to me anyway) which were the illustrations showing actual board traces and autorouting. Without being able to make out the illustrations the text becomes pretty meaningless. This is a very amateur graphics mistake that screams "High School Yearbook".

I have worked with schematics for a few years, they're fairly easy to understand once you get the basics of electronics; but PCB-building had always been a great mystery for me until I got this book and started experimenting with Eagle CAD software and some chemicals (not tranquilizers). First I learned how to extend the libraries, then to prepare the PCB layout - and autorouting, and finally, to develop the board using a laser printer and necessary chemicals. First trial was pathetic, but I got better with every new board, and my 5th board was perfect! Practice does pay off, and there is nothing like starting from scratch and succeeding.

So, if you want to learn about building PCB's from your schematics, get this book, read through, and do a LOT of google'ing to read any available sources, practice a lot, and don't give up if you fail at the beginning. You'll get better with practice.

Only weak point of this book is that there aren't enough pictures to illustrate the etching process. Otherwise, it is a perfect source of information.

This is a great book for the price. Delivers what it promises, teach you how to make a PCB starting with the design software, intro to materials needed, and various methods for creating the boards. Great book for those interested.

This book gives a pretty nice details and tutorials on how to use the different aspects of the Cadsoft Eagle drafting and layout tools. Probably not a book for those who intend to use Orcad or Pads, but for students and hobbyists that want use Cadsoft's freeware drafting tools to make circuit boards, it's invaluable. I especially like the references to things like appropriate drill sizes and trace widths that aren't in the Eagle manual.

This book is only a generic introduction to making circuit boards. It should not be called "Build your own" because the author only spends few pages describing the actual process of etching the boards. Rather MOST of the book is an Eagle cad manual with some poor illustrations that look washed out on the Kindle.

If you have etched one board in your life you probably should just skip this book. Most information contained in there can also be found free on Instructables or youtube.

As a hobby circuit builder I was really hoping to find some professional advice on board layout and mass production. The only recomendations in this book were to use Eagle and send your board overseas.

Save your $16.

If you are an electronics hobbyist that needs to graduate from the world of breadboards and perfboards into the realm of PCBs then this book is an excellent resource. For someone that has never made their own PCB and wants enough information to get on the path to success then I can highly recommend this book. The author is obviously an experienced writer as the book is well organized and presents the what, how and why of PCB creation in a way that was a joy to read. In addition to gaining the knowledge I was seeking to begin building PCBs I was able to gain additional insight by learning from the author's experiences which were recounted in the book. The fact that the book uses Eagle CAD examples was a huge benefit for me since I am in the process of learning that software. By reading this book I was able to accelerate my understanding of Eagle and learn things that I was not getting from Internet-based tutorials and the Eagle documentation. I will definitely look for other works by Al Williams.

Good book full of hints on specifically the EAGLE s/w. As with most free s/w the documentation is sparce and criptic that accompanies ite installatio package. Therefore, a good how-to is essential to fully utilizing the application. The book provides both general and specific schematic and PCB skills. It's an essential book and well worth it in time, money, and expertise. Recommended for your technical library!