2 tricks I noticed for mounting holes when going through some of Winterbloom's open source modules: - Use horizontally elongated ovals instead of circles. This gives you wiggle room in case there's any misalignment with the rails or neighbouring modules. Mannequins and Disting does this too. - Create a footprint for these instead of just adding circles to the edge cut layer every time. This lets you add indicators for the desired distance from the edge as a F.CrtYd (similarly to what you did here with user drawings) to make it easy to place them in future projects.
Thanks for sharing these tips! I could definitely see how building up some pre-sized footprints with offsets in them and setting the target center of them up so you could align it with the corners of your board would be really useful. The elongated ovals should work well for the mounting holes since I'm pretty sure for manufacturing they're routed out instead of drilled (so you can have any shape you'd like). I may not do use that kind of mounting holes on my boards because I use rails with slide nuts. I guess that's part of the fun of DIY is that you can tailor your modules to exactly what you have in your system!
Very well explained! I must say, KiCad has some pretty annoying quirks when using it like this for Panels though - Not sure how you managed to get it to do the copper fill on the panel without any pads on the board. I had to add some pads to the front and back for it to do the fill correctly. And then of course I had to remove the mask and silk screen of those pads in the footprint so that they wouldn't actually show up in the design. For the back layer I had to make sure the pad was on that side too, otherwise it wouldn't fill. And with no net connected it just did the fill outside the board and ignored the edge cuts, covering up all the holes. JLC would have rejected that for sure! It actually took me a few hours to figure out how to fix that and I got a bit frustrated, typical open source experience! But well, in the end I managed and I already ordered my boards! Now, fingers crossed I connected everything correctly 😄
This is great! Wound up following this to make a 2hp version of the Batumi expander (the official one comes in at an annoyingly awkward 3hp). Like the mult, it's a really simple passive circuit - just three on/off switches connected to a 6 pin male header.
Instead of making yourself suffer, setting your reference point and board edge boundaries, here's a suggestion. Set the grid to 5mm and set your reference point. Then select the tool to draw the board outline and set the first corner on the reference point. Change the grid to 0.5 to scan down to 128.5. Change the grid to 0.2mm and scan across to 9.8 mm. Change the grid to 0.5 again, and scan up again, until you reach the same horizontal line you started from and then on to close the rectangle.
Getting features to match and placed exactly where you want them always seems a bit difficult in KiCAD so I'm looking for new suggestions. I'll give this a try on one of my upcoming projects.
I fail to see the logic in starting of the files, but I just follow the video. Unfortuntely the panel schematic does not turn up under project files. Could this be a change in the interface as I am running version 7.
Thanks a lot for your videos! I really wanted to do a custom design for a module that I own, and with your help, I've done it in Kicad! So now I have a question: how do I export the file in the Gerber format and verified that everything works fine? Because I think I have exported correctly, but I'm not sure since nothing is showing up in the JLC viewer... Thanks!
Sorry it's taken me a bit to get back with an answer. I'm not sure I know what could be wrong because I've had pretty good luck with seeing my boards in JLCPCB's viewing tools. If you're still having problems I'd like to see if I can help out. Could you please DM me on my Instagram account: @eurorackDIY?
Thank you for a really good tutorial! When i ordered from JLCPCB there wan an option to replace the FR-4 with aluminium. This turned out great! My gold (f.Adhes) layer turned out silver thou. Maybe that has to do with the aluminium body. IDK. But the silver is not aluminium. Any thoughts? Thank you again :))
I'm glad the tutorial was useful, and thanks. As for using aluminum instead of FR-4 from JLCPCB, the layer that I use to get the gold coloring is what they call the "Surface Finish". There are three options they offer for that, two are solder masks (with lead and lead-free solder) and the third is ENIG or "electroless nickel immersion gold". It is only the ENIG finish that will give you a gold color for that layer. Unfortunately, they don't offer ENIG as an option when you choose aluminum boards. The inability to get the gold for my front panel graphics is why I've stuck with FR-4 for my designs and so far I've not had any problems using it. JLCPCB upgrades their processes frequently so perhaps someday this may become available.
hi i recently sent an order to jlcpcb for some panels, i followed your steps for the graphics as f.mask however when my panels turned up the f.mask graphics were in a silver tin finish and not the exposed copper, what did i do wrong?
So sorry to hear you didn't get back what you expected. The layer in KiCad that allows the gold (or silver in your case) to show is labeled "F. Mask". That's for the front solder mask which in the case of my boards I've selected to be black. The graphics displayed in KiCad are the inverse of that mask so where you see text or graphics will be an area that doesn't get the mask when the board is manufactured. While the copper traces are indeed under the mask, the manufacturing process at most processors puts one more coating over top of the copper, the surface finish (at least that's what JLCPCB calls it). This finish is there to make it easier to solder to the area not covered by the mask. The default for this finish is solder (either with lead or lead-free) so ends up coming out silver colored. To get the gold color you need to specify a surface of ENIG or electroless nickel immersion gold (it costs extra but for me and the aesthetic I'm going for it's worth it). The gold coloring literally comes from gold as it's the final layer of the process and specifically there to prevent tarnishing so that the board can be soldered to after a significant amount of time has passed.
For sure, it's fine to have it be silver and make that the basis of the look you're going for. But you don't need to make all your panels the same and you can vary knobs and knob colors, solder mask color (so the overall background color) or whatever you like - that's the beauty of DIY - it can be your own personal style!
@@eurorackDIY that explains, i did check with jlcpcb and they mention choosing a different surface finish as you've suggested, the add-on price is quite steep imo, especially since it is diy for me effectually ;) maybe ill give it a one time run and see the results for myself, I might just get swayed
Do the copper areas really need to cover the whole board, or do they simply need to be behind the graphics that we want to appear in gold? On the back, it seems like a waste to cover the entire board in copper. Could I simply put a copper dot on the back so the manufacturer does not see it as an error?
You're right that the copper doesn't have to cover the whole board and that at a minimum you do need it under the places where there isn't solder mask (graphics) if you want that to have the plating showing through. The edges of the copper do leave a bit of a texture under the solder mask which you could also use for subtle decoration if you choose. I didn't want that for my front panels so on the front side of the panel I wanted the copper mask over the whole board. Like you mention, if you wanted to you could just put a small area on the back of the board to keep it from flagging as an error. I don't know how much of a concern wasting the copper is as you aren't charged differently based on how much copper you do use and I believe the process used to manufacture boards etches the copper off of a fully coated board so it was all there in the first place (although I assume the manufacturer reclaims the copper from the etchant).
It's a reasonably priced one I got off of Amazon amzn.to/39gWID5 (affiliate link, as always, I'd appreciate the support!). I'm amazed at how indispensable they've become for these projects (but I also use them a lot for my 3d printing and other projects too). Having both imperial and metric units is very handy too.
I have not tried it as it doesn't offer the ENIG surface finish (at least yet) which means I don't get the gold graphics which I guess I'm both willing to pay for and forgo the option of aluminum. I've been completely happy with FR-4 as a material for my front panels and so far have seen no drawbacks from using it for that purpose.
It may make sense for me to do this on some project in the future. It's definitely not the easiest thing to do with KiCAD but I think if you search the right sources you can find the information. I've had success with one of my first boards trying out suggestions I've found online.
thank you alot for the great videos, they encouraged me to create my own custom front panel designs. i am a graphic designer and work primarily in adobe illustrator. does someone know a possibility to import directly from illustrator into kicad? or do i have to go through inkscape?
There are a couple of other ways to get graphics into Kicad. Basically they all revolve around creating a footprint (the Inkscape to Kicad conversion method I show does that). Kicad also has a bitmap to component conversion tool (it's the one with a lower-case a as its icon in the main Kicad window). This of course means you'd have to convert your vector graphics to a bitmap prior to using that tool and I've done that in the past but also ended up with line widths too narrow for the PCB manufacturer which meant my graphics didn't show up on my board at all. Also, in the footprint editor you can import from a .DXF file which you can also export to in Illustrator. That sort of works but I've had problems with it rendering lines correctly and haven't played too much to try and get it to work. If anyone else knows of other techniques I'd love to hear about them.
If you're talking about the version of KiCad I'm using in the video, it's unfortunately going to happen that it gets updated and will be different from videos I've made in the past. While I show some specific ways to use KiCad to create boards for modular synthesizers I'm not sure I'm ready to make this be all about that particular tool. There should be plenty of other great videos by other RUclipsrs that better track KiCad's capabilities.
Maybe a stupid question but my KiCad looks nothing like yours. I dont have the same toolbar on the right with the set origin, draw tools, or layer manager. I tried looking online but I couldn't find anything
2 tricks I noticed for mounting holes when going through some of Winterbloom's open source modules:
- Use horizontally elongated ovals instead of circles. This gives you wiggle room in case there's any misalignment with the rails or neighbouring modules. Mannequins and Disting does this too.
- Create a footprint for these instead of just adding circles to the edge cut layer every time. This lets you add indicators for the desired distance from the edge as a F.CrtYd (similarly to what you did here with user drawings) to make it easy to place them in future projects.
Thanks for sharing these tips! I could definitely see how building up some pre-sized footprints with offsets in them and setting the target center of them up so you could align it with the corners of your board would be really useful. The elongated ovals should work well for the mounting holes since I'm pretty sure for manufacturing they're routed out instead of drilled (so you can have any shape you'd like). I may not do use that kind of mounting holes on my boards because I use rails with slide nuts. I guess that's part of the fun of DIY is that you can tailor your modules to exactly what you have in your system!
This series is awesome. All the little notes and things-to-avoid are invaluable. Really grateful for these videos.
You're a good teacher, I learned a lot about KiCad watching this (never used it before). THANKS!
This is exactly what I was looking for thank you
Very well explained! I must say, KiCad has some pretty annoying quirks when using it like this for Panels though - Not sure how you managed to get it to do the copper fill on the panel without any pads on the board. I had to add some pads to the front and back for it to do the fill correctly. And then of course I had to remove the mask and silk screen of those pads in the footprint so that they wouldn't actually show up in the design. For the back layer I had to make sure the pad was on that side too, otherwise it wouldn't fill. And with no net connected it just did the fill outside the board and ignored the edge cuts, covering up all the holes. JLC would have rejected that for sure! It actually took me a few hours to figure out how to fix that and I got a bit frustrated, typical open source experience! But well, in the end I managed and I already ordered my boards! Now, fingers crossed I connected everything correctly 😄
Interesting. I look forward to watching your videos on other eurorack modules. Thanks for posting.
This is great! Wound up following this to make a 2hp version of the Batumi expander (the official one comes in at an annoyingly awkward 3hp). Like the mult, it's a really simple passive circuit - just three on/off switches connected to a 6 pin male header.
I love that you found this useful to make your own module!
So you live in southern California? Wow you live next door to Hollywood stars basically and you have the same hobby as me, crazy!
Awesome series of tutorial! Thanks!
Instead of making yourself suffer, setting your reference point and board edge boundaries, here's a suggestion. Set the grid to 5mm and set your reference point. Then select the tool to draw the board outline and set the first corner on the reference point. Change the grid to 0.5 to scan down to 128.5. Change the grid to 0.2mm and scan across to 9.8 mm. Change the grid to 0.5 again, and scan up again, until you reach the same horizontal line you started from and then on to close the rectangle.
Getting features to match and placed exactly where you want them always seems a bit difficult in KiCAD so I'm looking for new suggestions. I'll give this a try on one of my upcoming projects.
I fail to see the logic in starting of the files, but I just follow the video. Unfortuntely the panel schematic does not turn up under project files. Could this be a change in the interface as I am running version 7.
Thanks a lot for your videos! I really wanted to do a custom design for a module that I own, and with your help, I've done it in Kicad! So now I have a question: how do I export the file in the Gerber format and verified that everything works fine? Because I think I have exported correctly, but I'm not sure since nothing is showing up in the JLC viewer... Thanks!
Sorry it's taken me a bit to get back with an answer. I'm not sure I know what could be wrong because I've had pretty good luck with seeing my boards in JLCPCB's viewing tools. If you're still having problems I'd like to see if I can help out. Could you please DM me on my Instagram account: @eurorackDIY?
Thanks a ton sir!
Thank you for a really good tutorial! When i ordered from JLCPCB there wan an option to replace the FR-4 with aluminium. This turned out great!
My gold (f.Adhes) layer turned out silver thou. Maybe that has to do with the aluminium body. IDK. But the silver is not aluminium. Any thoughts?
Thank you again :))
I'm glad the tutorial was useful, and thanks. As for using aluminum instead of FR-4 from JLCPCB, the layer that I use to get the gold coloring is what they call the "Surface Finish". There are three options they offer for that, two are solder masks (with lead and lead-free solder) and the third is ENIG or "electroless nickel immersion gold". It is only the ENIG finish that will give you a gold color for that layer. Unfortunately, they don't offer ENIG as an option when you choose aluminum boards. The inability to get the gold for my front panel graphics is why I've stuck with FR-4 for my designs and so far I've not had any problems using it. JLCPCB upgrades their processes frequently so perhaps someday this may become available.
@@eurorackDIY Now when i've half assembeled the panel, pots and jacks. The silver looks even better than gold whould have :))
hi i recently sent an order to jlcpcb for some panels, i followed your steps for the graphics as f.mask however when my panels turned up the f.mask graphics were in a silver tin finish and not the exposed copper, what did i do wrong?
it does not look bad but i am curious if i did anything wrong
So sorry to hear you didn't get back what you expected. The layer in KiCad that allows the gold (or silver in your case) to show is labeled "F. Mask". That's for the front solder mask which in the case of my boards I've selected to be black. The graphics displayed in KiCad are the inverse of that mask so where you see text or graphics will be an area that doesn't get the mask when the board is manufactured. While the copper traces are indeed under the mask, the manufacturing process at most processors puts one more coating over top of the copper, the surface finish (at least that's what JLCPCB calls it). This finish is there to make it easier to solder to the area not covered by the mask. The default for this finish is solder (either with lead or lead-free) so ends up coming out silver colored. To get the gold color you need to specify a surface of ENIG or electroless nickel immersion gold (it costs extra but for me and the aesthetic I'm going for it's worth it). The gold coloring literally comes from gold as it's the final layer of the process and specifically there to prevent tarnishing so that the board can be soldered to after a significant amount of time has passed.
For sure, it's fine to have it be silver and make that the basis of the look you're going for. But you don't need to make all your panels the same and you can vary knobs and knob colors, solder mask color (so the overall background color) or whatever you like - that's the beauty of DIY - it can be your own personal style!
@@eurorackDIY that explains, i did check with jlcpcb and they mention choosing a different surface finish as you've suggested, the add-on price is quite steep imo, especially since it is diy for me effectually ;) maybe ill give it a one time run and see the results for myself, I might just get swayed
Do the copper areas really need to cover the whole board, or do they simply need to be behind the graphics that we want to appear in gold? On the back, it seems like a waste to cover the entire board in copper. Could I simply put a copper dot on the back so the manufacturer does not see it as an error?
You're right that the copper doesn't have to cover the whole board and that at a minimum you do need it under the places where there isn't solder mask (graphics) if you want that to have the plating showing through. The edges of the copper do leave a bit of a texture under the solder mask which you could also use for subtle decoration if you choose. I didn't want that for my front panels so on the front side of the panel I wanted the copper mask over the whole board.
Like you mention, if you wanted to you could just put a small area on the back of the board to keep it from flagging as an error. I don't know how much of a concern wasting the copper is as you aren't charged differently based on how much copper you do use and I believe the process used to manufacture boards etches the copper off of a fully coated board so it was all there in the first place (although I assume the manufacturer reclaims the copper from the etchant).
it is possible change the fonts type?
What brand of calipers are you using around 17:00?
It's a reasonably priced one I got off of Amazon amzn.to/39gWID5 (affiliate link, as always, I'd appreciate the support!). I'm amazed at how indispensable they've become for these projects (but I also use them a lot for my 3d printing and other projects too). Having both imperial and metric units is very handy too.
Thanks dude, very very very useful. Just a question, I see there is a aluminum option for the base material, did you try it? Any thoughts?
I have not tried it as it doesn't offer the ENIG surface finish (at least yet) which means I don't get the gold graphics which I guess I'm both willing to pay for and forgo the option of aluminum. I've been completely happy with FR-4 as a material for my front panels and so far have seen no drawbacks from using it for that purpose.
Can U please make this type of video about how to panelization in kicad.there are some bit of information on internet. But I stuk.plz brother help me.
It may make sense for me to do this on some project in the future. It's definitely not the easiest thing to do with KiCAD but I think if you search the right sources you can find the information. I've had success with one of my first boards trying out suggestions I've found online.
thank you alot for the great videos, they encouraged me to create my own custom front panel designs.
i am a graphic designer and work primarily in adobe illustrator. does someone know a possibility to import directly from illustrator into kicad? or do i have to go through inkscape?
There are a couple of other ways to get graphics into Kicad. Basically they all revolve around creating a footprint (the Inkscape to Kicad conversion method I show does that).
Kicad also has a bitmap to component conversion tool (it's the one with a lower-case a as its icon in the main Kicad window). This of course means you'd have to convert your vector graphics to a bitmap prior to using that tool and I've done that in the past but also ended up with line widths too narrow for the PCB manufacturer which meant my graphics didn't show up on my board at all.
Also, in the footprint editor you can import from a .DXF file which you can also export to in Illustrator. That sort of works but I've had problems with it rendering lines correctly and haven't played too much to try and get it to work.
If anyone else knows of other techniques I'd love to hear about them.
@@eurorackDIY i will look into it a little bit more and keep and keep you updated :)
@@simons_lab Do let me know too!
It's not same version the one in the video and the link below
If you're talking about the version of KiCad I'm using in the video, it's unfortunately going to happen that it gets updated and will be different from videos I've made in the past. While I show some specific ways to use KiCad to create boards for modular synthesizers I'm not sure I'm ready to make this be all about that particular tool. There should be plenty of other great videos by other RUclipsrs that better track KiCad's capabilities.
Hello?
Maybe a stupid question but my KiCad looks nothing like yours. I dont have the same toolbar on the right with the set origin, draw tools, or layer manager. I tried looking online but I couldn't find anything
Never mind I was using the schematic editor not the board editor