My goal with PCB making is to design the PCB's as small as possible without having the components touch each other.

When I do my transistor radio circuits, I have no problem doing this. When I do IC's, I run into problems. It seems that I can complete some connections by drawing a track around the outside of the circuit.

My PCB board is single sided, and I want to avoid using external wires to make the connections.

Right now, I'm trying to connect nor gates to inverters to 4017 counters. I have the circuit on my other computer, but as soon as I use two chips, the 3rd, 4th, etc become more difficult to connect.

Also, because the small track width has led to some broken connections, the lowest track width I can go is 0.5 mm.

Anyone have insight on some basic steps on making a perfect PCB from a circuit diagram without wasting hours on how each track is made?

If you have tons of experience making PCB's, I would like to hear from you first.
thanks

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-=: The best low-priced components to troubleshoot with are the speaker and the LED :=-

 

PCB design is more of an art than a science, there's no "magic solution" other than experience... the more boards you make, the better your designs will get, and the faster you will be able to design them. I've designed dozens and dozens of boards (probably approaching the hundred mark), and I can whip up a board design now much faster than when i first started...

There is no guarantee that any board can be done single-sided with short connections and no jumpers, especially when there are 3 or more IC's on it... so you should either get used to using jumpers, or learn to make double-sided boards :wink:
I still find many times when I have to give up and use some jumpers... I've caught myself spending an hour or two re-arranging traces to try and eliminate one jumper... then my traces get really long and cramped, and that's just an invitation for problems. You have to remember, it only takes a few seconds to solder in a simple jumper, so it's not worth wasting tons of time trying to mess with the design to get rid of it.

also, regarding your track width... 0.5mm is about 19 mils... I don't know what method you're using, but I regularly use 10 mil traces on my boards made using press-n-peel... I know I am always praising it, but it's hard to argue with the results... and I've never had a broken trace. sure helps when you're making small boards.

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EEgeek.net

 

Sometimes it's just impossible. If I'm really strapped, I will substitute leaded resistors and caps rather than tha SMD versions in order to run traces through them. I've had to resort to double sided every once in a while. I'm still not good at quickly figuring out where everything goes for optimal traces, so I tend to go through a few revisions of a board design before I get the best compromise.

Unofortunately I don't know of any shortcuts.

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Mark Higgins

 

What's wrong with jumpers??
If the solution to completing a trace is not very easy, I just slap a jumper in there. It's much better than having long traces, or very thin traces to fit inbetween component legs.

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I'm no electronics god, i just talk too much.