The termination insensitive amplifier described by W7ZOI & K3NHI is a useful building block for the RF home constructor. I've been making these using copper pads glued on to copper boards but wondered if there were PCB designs available. I know about the Mostly DIY RF boards and kits but as the boards are out of stock I thought I've see if I could get boards made myself.
I found Craig Weston, VE3CBW, has kindly drawn up a design in KiCAD and shared it publicly. It opens up just fine in KiCad. He has a blog post here.
Craig has done a wonderful job of laying out the board in a logical way.
To get a board made I chose PCBWay, who I've used in the past. I followed their instructions on exporting the Gerber files. There are layers for the copper, hole drilling, solder mask and text - a bit daunting but I just did what they said and as you can see it worked just fine:
I've now populated the board and it works nicely.
The instructions on exporting the required files from KiCad are for an older version but I muddled through and made a zip of all the output files which was uploaded to PCBWay. I can see that they make a plugin for KiCad that does it all and I plan to try that next time. Here's what I zipped and sent. Not sure if everything is required but there were no complaints.
My thanks to Craig. I would like to comment on his blog but it requires a login to something and I haven't figured out how to get through that so if you read this - thanks! Craig has a fascinating blog and a YouTube channel.
1 comment:
Stretch goal, design a TIA using surface mount components, and get it fabbed at the factory. The cost of the parts is minuscule, the size will halve, and you don't have to build it? Paul VK3HN
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