krabbencutter
Well-known member
The amount of accumulated toxicity makes my acid traps jealousI am just a "Beginner PCB Designer" since I only have 40+ years of designing PCBs for aerospace/avionics companies, defense contractors, medical electronics firms, NASA, R&D laboratories and others, so you can take my comments here with a "grain-of-salt", OK??? First off.....I would suggest that you pay attention to the comments of "Khron" and others who have offered you advice as their suggestions to you have been completely correct!!! If you are truly wanting to learn more about "How To Design PCB's Correctly", then.....SHUT-UP & PAY ATTENTION!!! What you will end up learning on this forum for -- FREE -- would have cost you at least several hundred Euros, if you would have taken a class or a webinar to learn this exact same stuff.
A lot of my PCB-design work has been in various "RF/microwave" environments and the many engineers I have worked with all had top-level engineering degrees on categories you didn't know existed from colleges and universities that you have never heard of!!! The point being is.....-- ALL -- of these engineers stressed onto me time and time again that you -- ALWAYS ROUTE TO A CAPACITOR FIRST -- before any other component!!! So.....you need to force yourself to create a components placement with this in mind, while also keeping a "mental eye open" with how the developing components placement might be affecting the eventual routing. In other words, while you are moving and placing the components around on your PCB, you -- ALSO -- need to be "imagining/visualizing" how the routing will be taking place at the same time!!! And.....doing this TAKES SKILL.....Buddy!!!
One "RF" company I worked at was involved with designing highly-specialized communications equipment for "unknown and unheard of" U.S. Government secret agencies. YES!!!.....working at this company had finally verified for me that there are actually all sorts of "covert intelligence-gathering" U.S. agencies that nobody knows about!!! Real spooky stuff!!! In any case, the engineers at this company would perform tests on existing "RF" PCB's and log their test results. Then.....they would have me completely redesign these PCB's.....with the components placement and the routing.....GOING TO THE CAPACITORS FIRST!!! When the new PCB's arrived and were assembled, the engineers would then re-run their tests again. While the engineers were performing their tests, they would invite me over to their workbench areas and they showed me their test results of the new PCB's as compared to the previous PCB's. I could then see for myself the lower noise, faster slew rates, overall higher performance of the circuits.....just by simply placing and routing to the capacitors FIRST!!! But, again.....what do I know??? You can either take what I have written here at its own value.....or.....you can believe that I am just making all of this up!!! Your call!!!
In general.....I would fatten up your tracks.....JUST BECAUSE!!! Doing so lowers both the track resistance and its inductance. In addition, you should really try to avoid entering/exiting component pads like this:
------↓↓↓↓↓------
View attachment 129341
Doing this creates what are called "Acid Traps" and over a period of time, these can cause the track and/or pad to come loose or, delaminate, from the PCB material. In other words, these are called a "NO!!!-NO!!!".
There are some other issues with your layout that I was going to mention, but I would end up writing a small booklet in trying to cover all of the pertinent details. Therefore.....why don't you just ZIP-up all of your KiCAD files connected with this layout of yours and send them to me via a PM and I will look them over for you. That will be MUCH easier!!!
And.....just in case you may be wondering.....these are the typical types of PCB's I have been involved with designing:
-- TOPSIDE --
View attachment 129342
-- BACKSIDE --
View attachment 129343
-- TOPSIDE --
View attachment 129344
-- BACKSIDE --
View attachment 129345
NOTE: These PCB's were used in signal-processing equipment as the signals from The HUBBLE Telescope and the various Space Shuttle missions were received here on Earth and processed for use by NASA facilities around-the-world.
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It's 46x20mm which is 4mm taller than the original AT8. All resistors & caps are 0805 parts and I've included the fabrication outputs for JLCPCB.
I have also refined the AT8 PCB a bit and the assembled PCBs should hopefully arrive next week. I'll publish the GitHub repository once I've tested the design.
