Dave - Nexus Circuits

@blind_via That still doesn't look enough

How many decoupling caps do you need? Yes

Or compensate the tants ESR with a series resistor.

@kicad_pcb Protel SE99 which later became Altium DXP had this way back in 1999.

Lots of people new to KiCad think that we copy interfaces from <pick your favourite tool>. But look back through the history and you'll see that this existed in KiCad first. How do we know? Well, 3d-viewer was added in 2004. Before Altium Designer existed as a product.

Why can't manufacturers have two variants of the same RS485 driver? A-B B-A

@i2cjak Not tried it, but that sounds like a production nightmare.

lol, EEs scared of via-in-pad, we live in 2026, it's free now, just put the via in the pad

Don't sweat the small stuff. +1.5 ohm is less than 0.1dB line loss

Provide so much detail that a beginner engineer could understand.

Your schematics should have as much detail as possible: 1. Full Manufacturer Part No 2. Voltage values across the circuit 3. Brief description of each section of the design 4. Any complex IC's should have internal block diagrams (exc MCU's). 5. Notes for further details. ...

What if one day you could only place an item in your basket if you have a very good social credit score (+4.2)

@i2cjak @willreil I thought he was after part numbers.

@willreil FROM MEMORY ZENER SCHOTTKY LIGHT EMITTING SHOCKLEY PIN TVS not from memory Laser diodes Photodiodes (am I fucking stupid?) Tunnel diodes Gunn diodes (? Just tunnel diodes?)

Oh you like electronics? Name 10 diodes.

@MakeAugusta Classic

@MakeAugusta @blind_via When you let the autorouter run free.

@blind_via ???

Spot the obvious error on this pcb

@blind_via Solder mask over the two large thermal relief pads? Appear to be D2PAK footprints.

@i2cjak @blind_via Unless you're building +100k boards and saving every penny, there's not much difference in price between 2 and 4-layers. You're EMC test engineer will thank you.

@blind_via Idk if that’s actually a worry. Also please for the love of God just use a 4 layer board. 0 ohm single layer is so incredibly boomer

I recommend not routing traces between pads of your ICs or discrete. Too much of a shorting risk from the solder joint of the pin. It is pretty common on low cost electronics though, but I'm a reliability dude first. That said, there is an entire practice of 0 ohm jumpers being used on single layer board designs.

@blind_via Kapton tape is great for reworking high density boards.

Flex Circuits Rigid PCBs use woven fiberglass and epoxy as the substrates, but Flex use different materials, such as Polyimide (Kapton) which is very durable to high temperature. Useful for many applications to have a circuit that can bend and change shape compared to the stiff counterparts. In the image bellow you can see each of these flex example have "stiffeners" attached to them in areas that need to be rigid. The flex can be damaged pretty easily with too much stress, so these stiffeners are necessary where you plug your connectors.

Sometimes you just have to break the rules

@blind_via After spending hours fault-finding a board which had a hairline fracture on a screw-type terminal pad, I now use tear drops across the board.

I don't need tear drops for this board, but what the heck, why not. That said, is this really the only way to enable tear drops in KiCAD PCB. One by one in the properties of the via? Cannot I not say, add teardrops to, or have it on by default somehow? Filtering all vias is fine, but was hoping for a better solution.

@DabsMalone Anyone can layout a prototype board. Production boards that are qualified and easy to build are another beast.

If your only job was to learn PCB design 8 hours a day… How long until you could design something like this? Most people wildly overestimate the barrier.

@blind_via Voltage isolation Thermal management Mechanical constraints Signal integrity DfM DfT Impedance matching Diffential pairs EMC/Radio testing All of these need to be considered when designing a commerial board for production. Hardwares hard.

Sorry bro, pcb design is not solved by AI. Wake up, there is lots of work to be done to realize this. So many AI guys think this is a game of connect the dots. THAT is not what I do for a living, learn more about what I do before you think you can fix it in 20 minutes

@blind_via Much prefer option 2 as there's no branching. Engineering has to prioritise aesthetics.

Stub Elimination for reversible USB-C PCB traces. Do I even need this? I probably don't need this, just wanted to see what it would look like. Not pretty. Can anybody do a better job?