Arduino S3V3 toner transfer image for Letter size

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Development
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Hey there! I'm a proud and geeky Duemilanove owner, and was recently enlightened to the possibilities of Arduino programming after purchasing an MPGuino device from a fellow Arduino enthusiast - a customized ATmega328 platform with a 20MHz clock, designed to calculate and display a car's miles per gallon in realtime.

I've always been curious about the possibilities of toner-transfer PCB etching. I wanted to get my start by buying the supplies and etching my own Arduino board using the S3V3 guide. However, the page for the S3V3 (arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardSerialSingleSided3 - since I can't post a link to it!) only has a PNG file (huh?) of an A4-size board.

Since PNG doesn't actually carry DPI and sizing information, the last thing I want to do is end up printing a mis-sized board on Letter (8.5x11") paper. Actually it's pretty bad to be a PNG anyway... why no PDF love? If the A4 were a PDF instead, I could just use "No resizing" to make it center off the top and bottom ~0.11" of the page. But with a PNG I could never get it right due to the lack of native sizing. Heck, I can't actually figure out how someone could print a proper-sized image from a PNG anyway, with margins and all!

The big concern is, if size is off by any small amount (due to an image's tendency to be "scaled to fit"), the holes won't have the right spacing, and the whole project would be ruined. Hence my concern. :slight_smile:

Any ideas?

edit: Well, found that the PNG does have DPI information (although inaccurate, as Photoshop estimated it at 599.999 DPI), so I was able to print it. However, the information seems to get scrambled by the printer (or Photoshop) and it created a nice misalignment-line between pins 2 and 3 (both A and D sides) on the right-side boards, where the image seems to have been "squished"... printer/driver bug I'm sure, but one that wouldn't've been present in PDF... :-/ Now I'm just trying to get a presentable double-print done so I can get a good etch :wink:

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See if you can find an Eagle schematic and board layout.
Then you can download the free version and print accurately from within Cadsoft Eagle.
Eagle can take a while to learn if you are creating your own schematics and boards but you should be able to print an existing board from it fairly easily.

Gordon

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http://webzone.k3.mah.se/k3dacu/arduino/releases/serial_v2_single_sided/board_toProduce.pdf

Download eagle and the eagle file is what I would probably do.

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Yeah, that was one of the things I tried. However, it looks like some serious post-processing was done outside of Eagle, as it would only give me one (slightly different) PCB on a sheet, not the component side labeling either (unless I select it).

As an added bonus, I finally got everything printed, transferred, etched, drilled, and soldered... but when I went to power on the new board which I'd spent all day trying to troubleshoot and patch up... the transfer was TERRIBLE and had a lot of sharpie- and solder-patching to do... well, I got nothing at first. Then after I cleaned up a few solder-blobs, the Power LED came on, but nothing happened on the LED display I'd set up with the previous Arduino board.

The only way I knew it was running was that the ATmega328 chip was burning hot! Almost enough to discolor the "Arduino" label I put on it. So I took it out (it was oriented properly), put it back in my Duemilanove, attached the LED panel back to it (thank god for ScrewShield, I just pop it off and back on), and try it. Nothing. Chip isn't overheating anymore but it's still a little lukewarm. Try to upload the sketch to it, and the Rx LED blinks a few times but it just errors out. Went to my old Dell and tried using the parallel programmer with it, and it just gives me errors like it's not plugged in (not responding, signature mismatch, etc).

Dude. I think this is my most expensive mistake ever :frowning: