Design Your Own PCB Business Card

In this instructable I am going to show you how to make your own printed circuit board business card. I feel that these business cards will really help you stand out from the crowd and make a great impression. It might even add one more skill to your resume. Everyone that I have given these cards out to has been really impressed and thought it was a great idea. I have regular business cards as well and I only selectively give out my circuit board cards. You can take it to the next level by soldering different circuits on the cards. I made one of my cards into a standalone Arduino.

Design Your Own PCB Business Card

Step 1: Download PCB Design Software

A computer with the PCB design software CadSoft Eagle installed is all you will need.

You can download it for free here. Download the program for your operating system(Linux, Windows or Mac). When you run the program for the first time, choose the “Run as freeware option.” You can use this as long as you do not sell any of your boards. You are just fine making business cards and small circuit boards for yourself. There are some limitations to using the Freeware version of Eagle. The useable board area is limited to 100 x 80 mm (4 x 3.2 inches), only two signal layers can be used (Top and Bottom), and the schematic editor can only create one sheet. Other than that, it has all the features that the professional version has.

Step 2: Download the Board File and Add Your Details

Download my board file and open it with Eagle. To add you name and details, right click the plus sign at the upper left hand of the text and click on properties. Customize the board as much as you want. I added a silkscreened logo to the back of my board in the same location at the contact information. To do this, you will need to learn a bit about layers. Layer 21(tPlace) and layer 22(bPlace) are used for silkscreening the top and bottom of the board respectively. Create your logo and flip it horizontally and save it as a bitmap(.bmp). In Eagle, go to File->Import->Bitmap and import your logo to layer 22. If you want to change the shape of the board, you can edit layer 20(Dimension) with the Polygon tool in the tool bar.

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