PCB layout help

KMoffett

Joined Dec 19, 2007
2,918
After some morning coffee...I remembered there are issues about very thin ground plane traces and unconnected floating islands in ground planes. Check the HELP pull down manual on placing ground planes...the "Important..." section near the end.

Ken
 

KMoffett

Joined Dec 19, 2007
2,918
If nothing else has changed in the layout, I'd say you're there. (The ground planes makes it difficult to check the net connections as they jump from side to side.)

Ken
 

n1ist

Joined Mar 8, 2009
189
Schematic:
- Wires should be either horizontal or vertical, not angled
- 4 wires should not meet at one point (ie, pin 2 of the regulator). Two sets of 3-way junctions are better. Otherwise, it is hard to tell the difference between overlapping and intersecting lines
- Reference designators should not overlap components or wires
- Reference designators for ICs should be U1, U2 (or IC1, IC2)
- Component values are missing
- Wires should not overlap components
- You have two 5V sources tied together (regulator and USB connector). Use diodes or FETs to isolate them if you want to power the board from either
- Will this circuit be hooked up to a TEC as a generator (Seebeck effect)? Normally TECs are used for the Peltier effect (supply a current, one side heats and the other cools)

PCB:
- Traces and planes should not get closer than 50 mils to the edge of the board
- Traces should bend as two 45-degree bends, not one 90-degree bend
- ExpressPCB only has silk screen on the top side; you have silk desgnators for backside components that will print on the top instead
- There are traces used to connect grounded nodes separate from the copper pours, and pads aren't tied to the pours. I would delete the traces and let the pour connect things. Also the pours are quite broken up
- Try to eliminate floating islands of unconnected regions in the pours
- Signal traces don't need to be 20 mils; thinner traces may make routing easier
- Traces should be vertical, horizontal, or 45 degrees
- Traces should connect to rectangular pads straight on. Be careful to avoid acid traps like the ones by pins 5 and 6 of the opamp
- Label the polarity of the battery and TEC connectors
- You have thick traces drawn on top of thin traces. To change the width of a trace, right click on the trace and select "Set trace properties"

/mike
 
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