Selfmade Arduino Shields

Good day!

I am working with stepper motors and arduino nano using different drivers according to the circumstance. Sometimes dvr8825, sometimes tmc2208 or 2209.

I would like make some pcbs for these different configurations, but I have no experience with this. No experience designing pcbs and also no experience working with companies that print these pcbs.

Can somebody support me with this task?

Thank you!

  • That’s a huge task if you have no experience, but it’s doable.
  • Start by writing down your design criteria so you and others know exactly what the requirements are.
    Not doing this often results in starting over as you often miss something important.
  • When things are carved into stone, proceed with making a final schematic of the project.

Learn KICAD, it’s not that hard. If you don’t want to then post your budget.

Unless you design a “multi position” shield, your pinout will be set in stone. So make sure you use the right ones, i.e. if you think a project may need a lot of analog inputs, dont digitally use the analogs for the motor control. If you think a project will need pin interrupt capability, don't use the interrupt pins for the motor shield. The same with other pins.

Give it some thought, don’t just use pins willy nilly.

If you haven’t made a PCB before, one option is to make a soldered proto shield as a kind of halfway house to a proper printed PCB. Laying out all your components including terminals and working out where you need ground connections and where wires need to cross will help a lot when it comes to designing the finished product.

And of course you can simply use it as the end product, although if you are making more than a couple, a proper PCB will be quicker.

This example is on a genuine Arduino proto shield, but you can easily buy generic proto boards and headers.

For a small pcb like an Arduino shield, I suggest you EasyEDA. There is an online editor and also the possibility to order directly the PCB once designed. Very easy to get started.

Once you get everything working and thoroughly tested, then's the time to move up to something better.
As mentioned, the universal shields are a good step up or the FR4 prototyping boards with plated though holes make for more robust test platforms.
When I had access to all the gear to produce PCBs that was fine.
These days, strip board or the FR4 boards do.

Thank you for all the useful tips and recomendations!
I really appreciate the positive comments.

I did already indeed build some self-made shield with proto boards. Now I though the next level would be to create small batches of them to see how is the process.

In the photos you can see one of them.

this might seem obvious, but it is actually great advice.

Thank you!

willy nilly :smiley:

Aren't the modules that implement these drivers pretty "standardized"?
I've seen boards aimed at 3d printers with sockets for the motor drivers, and always assumed that this allowed one to pick and choose driver modules depending on the requirements for the particular motor.

OTOH, thanks to the 3d printer and robotics hobbyist market, there are quite a few board out there designed to allow "Arduinos" to be the brains of motor-based devices, many already designed to accept such modules. See "RAMPS", for example (although that's usually aimed at bigger Arduinos, like the Mega. An Nano or Uno doesn't really have enough pins to control all of a 3d printer.)
Also, I found (this is not a recomendation) this:

(Seems to be available from several places)
(However, note that tmc2209 and others have alternate control methods (eg UART) that may not be connected on such boards, even if they're available on the connectors.)