20: Soldered Together By Monkeys
Phil King of Weekend Engineering advises host Elecia White on the end-to-end process of designing and fabricating a custom PCB, from schematic capture to assembly. They discuss the trade-offs between professional EDA tools like OrCAD and Altium, free options like EaglePCB and KiCad, and vendor-specific tools like DigiKey's SchemeIt and ExpressPCB. The conversation covers the critical importance of net lists, PCB layout challenges such as trace spacing and via types, and the logistical complexities of sourcing components and managing fabrication costs.