I had been planning to make myself a business card for a long time, but still could not decide on the design. Suddenly a non-standard idea came up. I decided to make myself a business card in the form of a printed circuit board. I don't even know how relevant they are, but an unusual approach to the issue will definitely not be left without attention.

I made a PCB project in Dip Trace. I needed the business card to contain space for any electronic components, tracks, holes, etc. Just like a real board, I was not going to solder anything. I opened the board editor in Dip Trace, found a standard example of a printed circuit board that comes with the software. I removed some unnecessary elements such as large connectors and everything that could interfere with the location of the contact information. I wanted all the text to be done on a copper layer and not be covered with a protective mask.

We draw the border of the PCB. I chose a rectangle with rounded edges, 84.6 * 53.98 mm. This is the exact size of a plastic bank card. Here are the parameters I entered.

In general, the latest version of Dip Trace has a handy tool for drawing board borders. Enter the dimensions and radius of the corners we need, and the shape is ready.

Placed electronic components. The order does not matter, here I do it based on the design and the required free space. I even used autorouting to make the tracks appear. You can't do without them, otherwise what kind of electronics is this)

Then, using the "Text" tool, I placed my contacts. The layer has selected "Cooper" and "Top".

But, if we leave everything like that, the text will be covered with a protective solder mask. I wanted it on the contrary, plus to this, that it went through the tinning process, to give it a silver color. As well as the contact pads of the components.

To do this, I copied the text, made it a "Top Mask" layer and positioned it exactly above the text in the copper layer.

Now let's see how the board will look. Let's use a 3D preview of the board.

It seems that that's all. But we are left with an empty bottom side of the board. There I placed a QR code for writing to the phone of the contact of our company. The Dip Trace functionality also helped in this. The "Image" tool allows you to immediately convert any image into a vector and give it any layer on the board. For the QR code, I have selected the "Bottom Label" layer.

This is what the bottom layer looks like in the editor.

In 3D.

An important point. After I made the QR code, in a third-party editor I made a horizontal reflection so that it was displayed correctly on the board itself.

I chose the following manufacturing parameters.

Dimensions - 84.60 x 53.98

Thickness - 0.8 mm.

Just like a bank card.

Quantity - 25 pcs. For a sample.

The solder mask is blue. This is how I like it. You can choose another one.

The original article in Russian - https://tehnopage.ru/krutaya-vizitka-inzhenera