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As you get more advanced in your electronics skills, you may find that you want to create your own custom-printed circuit boards rather than force your circuit designs to fit the limited variety of preprinted circuit boards that are available. Although it isn’t a trivial or inexpensive process, it’s possible to make your own printed circuit boards customized for your circuit.

Here are the basic steps for creating your own printed circuit boards:

1 Purchase a blank PCB. The entire surface of one side of this board will be completely coated with copper.

2 Create a mask on the copper surface that indicates the circuit layout.There are several ways to do this. For simple circuits, you can simply hand-draw the circuit onto the copper using a special pen designed for this purpose. For more complicated circuits, you can purchase special stickers that are shaped like pads and common traces and place the stickers directly on the copper. Or you can design the circuit on your computer using any graphics drawing software, print the design on special paper, and transfer the design to the copper using a hot iron.

3 Etch the board by dipping it into a special chemical that eats away all the copper that isn’t covered by your mask.This is a nasty process that needs to be done outside in a well-ventilated area while wearing gloves, a face mask, and goggles. When the etching is finished, all the copper that wasn’t covered by the mask will be gone.

4 Wash the board to get all that nasty copper etching solution off.

5 Scrub away the mask to reveal the beautiful copper circuit pattern left behind.

6 Drill holes in the center of each pad, and then assemble your circuit.

Note that there are several companies on the Internet that will make small printed circuit boards for you. It isn’t cheap, but the price per board comes down dramatically if you have them make more than just one. For example, PCBWay (www.pcbway.com) will make 4-inch-square circuit boards for about $3 per board if you order ten.