Introduction: How to Design and Order an ECU PCB With JLCPCB

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This article is proudly sponsored by LCSC and JLCPCB.

Founded in 2006, JLCPCB has been at the forefront of the PCB industry. With over 14-year continuous innovation and improvement based on customers' need, we have been growing fast, and becoming a leading global PCB manufacturer, who provides the rapid production of high-reliability and cost-effective PCBs and creates the best customer experience in the industry.

In this project I will show you how you can make an ECU PCB With JLCPCB.

Step 1: Prototype

There are six main reasons to prototype:

1. Fail early and inexpensively: Real innovation always includes a risk of failure. By building a prototype, you can quickly weed out the approaches that don’t work to focus on the ones that do.

2. Gather more accurate requirements: Almost half of all project costs are attributed to rework due to inadequate requirements. By developing a working prototype, you can demonstrate the functionality to help solidify requirements for the final design.

3. Technically understand the problem: By developing a functional prototype, you can address both the foreseen and the unforeseen technical challenges of a device’s design. You can then apply those solutions to a more elegant system design when you move to the final deployed solution.

4. Resolve conflicts: By taking advantage of a prototyping platform, you can quickly conduct several different implementations of the feature and benchmark the resulting performance to analyze the trade-offs of each approach. This can save time, but it also ensures that you make the correct design decisions.

5. Rally financial support: By developing a prototype to demonstrate the feasibility of your idea, you lower the risk of investment and therefore increase the probability that your idea will be funded.

6. File patents more easily: Though no longer required, a prototype is still the best and safest way to demonstrate “reduction to practice.” Furthermore, key components of a patent application, such as patent drawings and the inventor’s logbook, can be developed through the prototyping process.

Step 2: Draw the Schematic

The first step to do to start working on your own PCB is to draw the schematic.

There are a bunch of software to do this such as EasyEDA, a free software that you can access through your browser and KiCAD, a free to download software commonly used for personal projects. All this software are similar one to each other, so the basic principles are the same.

The first thing to do to create the schematic is to place the components. To do this you can use the integrated tool to search for the component you will need on your circuit.
After that you have to make all the connections to link each component to the others. Remember to double-check all the connections.

Before moving on use the tool that helps you chech all the electrical problems and short circuits.

Step 3: Assign Footprints

The next step is to assign footprints to the components. This will help us when we will draw the PCB itself.
To do this process we will need to know each precise component we will use on our circuit. From this information we can retrieve sone important data such as the dimensions of the component and the number of pins.

Now that we know all the informations about our components we can move on to assign the footprints. To do this you can use the tool incorporated in the software you are using. In this tool you will need to choose the "type" and dimensions of each component you inserted into the schematic. Start from the first component of the list and assign to it its footprint, after that move on to the next one and so on.

Now we are ready to start drawing our PCB

Step 4: PCB Layout

To start working on your PCB layout you will need to draw the border of the PCB you want to design, choose a shape and its dimensions. After this you will need to place the components in the place you want them on the board.

Once you like the layout of the board you can start drawing the tracks. To do this you will need to manually connect each component to the others using the command "track" on your software. You can also use multiple layers and ground plane to make a better layout.

Once you're happy with your layout you can move on to the next step.

Step 5: Gerber File

If you are using a downloaded software to draw your PCB you will need to export your layout to place your order on JLCPCB, otherwise if you are using EasyEDA you can simply use the command integrated in the interface to send your design to JLCPCB for production and skip this step.

To export your Gerber files you will need to navigate through the menus of your software until you find a command called "export" or "Gerber files". Then make sure to export all the gerber files of your layers, BOM and the dril files for the holes of the PCB.

Step 6: Order Your PCB on JLCPCB

We finally reached the final step. To order your PCB navigate to www.jlcpcb.com and on the homepage fill in the table with the characteristics of your PCB. Then click on "Quote Now" and the website will redirect you to the ordering page. Now select all the characteristics you require for your PCB or leave it to the defaults if you do not need particular options.

To the top of the webpage click on add gerber files and upload the file you exported in the previous step.

If you want them to solder your components into place check the "SMT assembly" toggle and fill in the information required.

Now we can move on, click on the next button in the right part of the webpage. Now you will have to add the remaining files, such as the bom files and the pick and place files. Upload this files and keep going on.

When you finished uploading all your files you will be asked for your personal information, shipment address and shipment option.

We are now ready to place the order, just get to the checkout and pay for your order.

Finished. Your PCB is on the way. Just wait it to arrive and remember that you can always keep track of your order from your personal account on www.jlcpcb.com.

Remember thgat if you have any trouble you can always use the live chat on www.jlcpcb.com to talk to an expert.

Enjoy!