As I have been moving forward on the PCB layout, changes are getting smaller and I need to be more precise in making them. This slows down progress, as I really want to work on the PCB, only when my personal energy and patience are at high levels.

Had good energy early this morning and made progress on some touchy areas in and around the power supply. I finally feel that the back copper layer is starting to look close to where I want it. Changes to the back copper from here on out, are going to be very minor. In fact, on the back copper, I’m thinking of taking a shot at rounding off corners on the small traces, which is one of the last tasks for this layer.

On the front copper, before declaring victory, I want to do some trace spacing tweaks, especially in the busy areas between chip rows A & B and also B & C.

Front silk screen is pretty good, but I will improve character to character spacing in a couple of text strings and also improve the shape of the decoupling capacitor symbol.

My first pass through a PCB vendors DFM check returned a number of issues, I’m working through.

Besides circuit design reviews, I need to do a review of hole sizes – nothing worse than a hole too small to fit the designated component.

Regards,
Mike Willegal