A printed circuit board assembly consists of several circuit boards that have been stacked together. Printed circuit boards can be made at home. Once the circuit pathways have been mapped out in a PCB CAD program, they are transferred to a paint program. The image is then reversed or mirrored and printed out on transfer paper to an exact scale. Most PCB CAD programs allow for the circuit pathways to be highlighted or their colors changed so that they can be printed directly onto a transfer medium that is placed onto the circuit board.
Instructions
1 Create your printed circuit pathways on your PCB CAD software. Create one circuit pathway at a time to make it easier to see where the circuit functions are going to be routed on your board.
2 Choose "Options" in the view menu of the CAD program. Turn off or unselect "Show Grid." Turn off "View Top Copper Layer" or "View Bottom Copper Layer" depending on which layer of the circuit design you do not want to print. Unselect "View Silkscreen Layer." Unselect "View Corners."
3 While still in the options menu of the CAD program, select the "Colors" tab. Click on the "Background" tab and select the color white. Click on the "Top Layer" tab and select the color black. Click on the "Bottom Layer" tab and select the color black. Click on the "Board Edges" and select the color black if you want a border to help you align the print and give yourself a guide when you go to drill holes into the circuit board assembly. Select "OK." The circuit diagram view window now shows the copper circuit pathways in black.
4 Zoom in on the board image until it is as big as you can get it to go while still fitting in the window. Press the ALT and Print Screen keys simultaneously to take a screen shot.
5 Start your paint program. Select the "Edit" tab to bring down the "Edit" menu. Select "Paste" or "Paste As New Image." The screen shot you took appears in the paint program's window. Crop the picture until it only has the circuit board design on it. Select the "Flip/Mirror Image" feature to flip the circuit diagram around. Do not select "Rotate" as it won't turn out right for you when you go to print it.
6 Insert the printed circuit board transfer film into the printer so the dull side of the transfer film is up. Print the circuit image that you made in your paint program onto the transfer film.
