How circuit boards are made?

• Basic Steps

  • Raw material Copper Clad FR-4 (fibreglass) - Apply a photoresist
  • Expose to UV light
  • Etch unwanted copper
  • Drill holes
  • Plate with copper

  Requirements and Architecture

  What is your device going to do

  How is it going to do

  Mechanical Design

  What is it going to look like

  Electrical Design

  What components are you going to use?

  Schematic Design (+ making symbols if not in lib)

  PCB layout ( +making footprints if not in lib)

  Process

  Review Design

  DRC set by manufacturer

  Does the design meet your requirement

  Generate Manufacturing outputs

  Gerber Files (PCB layouts)

  Copper wires - Top layer, bottom layer,signals

  solder mask - top solder

  solder paste - top paste

  silkscreen(overlay) - top overlay

  NC Drill Files ( Drill locations and Sizes) - Schematic

  Bill of materials (BOM)

  PCB print?

  Pick and place files

  Altium Project St

  Altium Project Files

  ProjPCB

  SchDoc

  PcbDoc

  SchLib

  PcbLib

  OutJob