Hello i have been trying,
but it seems like there is no good tutorial on how to take your board design from eagle and print it so i can etch it.
can someone please help me?
Your subject mentions gerber, but you then go on to refer to printing your own. If you just want to print it, why not print straight from Eagle? All you need is the appropriate layers being visible (e.g. bottom/pads/vias/whathaveyou), then hit File > Print…, make sure the ‘black’ option and ‘mirror’ (if printing the mirrored side) is set, and print away. You can print to PDF first to make sure the output is what you want it to be. This saves the gerber export and gerber inspections steps, which are more typically used when planning to have your PCB made by a PCB fab house.
Ok but how do i do a batch, for example have the board image tiled so i can etch multiple boards right next to each other?
If your printer doesn’t support it natively (mine does, an older HP model), then another option is to go through File > Export… > Image. Browse to a place to save the image, specify its filename, tick the Monochrome option and set the Resolution option to at least 300 (your laser printer will probably be capable of 600 and up). Then you can manipulate the image in any image editor, most of which will allow you to duplicate the image across a page, but even using something like Word will do in a pinch.
ok but when i export the board as an image it blows it up out of scale?
When you export it with a given DPI setting, say 600DPI, then it makes the image large enough that 600 pixels is exactly one inch if the program you’re printing with also prints at 600DPI. Graphics programs usually let you choose this - if you’d use something like Word for the task, then you can enter the dimensions directly.
You don’t want it to make the image the same size as what you get on screen because what’s on your screen is very low quality - if you printed it, you’d see little stairsteps in your traces just as you do on your screen.
For printing, you can use the CAM processor to output postscript or “embedded postscript”, and then use assorted postscript utilities (ghostscript, etc) for tiling/etc.
(EAGLE has nice features for using printer-based output (like scaling adjustments), but it doesn’t support tiling…)
So how do i get the dimensions to enter in to word, and how do i do that?
If you don’t know your board’s dimensions, just draw a rectangle that encompasses your board and check its properties.
Make sure the exported image fits that same rectangle.
Then in word (and I do recommend using a graphics program over word), right-click on the image after inserting it. There should be an option for changing its properties there, among which its dimensions. Make those match what you measured from the rectangle.
Again, though, a graphics program is better for this 
I figured it might be better if I just did a little write-up here.
The problem:
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You wants to DIY your boards out of Eagle. Be that via toner transfer or special mask transfers or photosensitive PCBs, etc. No problem, this topic is well-covered in other online resources.
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But you want to do more than one board at a time. I.e. panelization of your board(s). Eagle doesn’t support this directly*, so you have to roll your own solution.
( * see bottom of post for additional data, for users of the upper Eagle licenses )
This write-up goes over the steps required for one possible way to do that; through image exports and subsequent image manipulation.
What you’ll need:
Exporting the images
I’ll be using the 74HC595 Shift Register Breakout for this part of the write-up.
Open the Eagle file of interest. What you’ll see on your screen is something like this:
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Turns out this example file throws a small curveball, in that it has open plane polygons. Press the Ratsnest button, or use the command RATSNEST, to make sure the board is actually routed correctly.
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Of course, we can’t use this as is. What we need is a black-and-white image of the traces and pads that are to go on the board.
First you have to consider what you want to be printed on the board.
You’d at least want the bottom or top (depending on the side you’re processing!) traces, any standard pads, and any vias if applicable. It’s often a good idea to also include the dimension of your board so you can get its exact outlines, including any (mounting) hole locations - just make sure they don’t accidentally interfere with traces.
](http://imgur.com/NGkvx)
Alternatively to the above, run the command DISPLAY NONE 16 17 18 20 (command lines are a good thing indeed).
The board’s display should now be as follows:
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Notice how the vias are almost invisible within the planes. This is going to be especially problematic when we start exporting to a black/white image, as both will simply be black. Thankfully there’s a utility included with Eagle PCB that can help us there - the drill aid. Its purpose is to help with drill positioning, filling in pads except for a small spot in the center. However, we’ll be using it to actually expose the holes completely as the vias are currently completely filled in by the planes.
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Unfortunately the drill aids ended up with a hatched pattern and a blue color. We want them to be plain white. You could open the Display list and change the settings for Layer 116, that is used by the drill aid, manually. But the following command will do much the same with less hassle:
SET COLOR_LAYER 116 0; SET FILL_LAYER 116 1; WINDOW;
The result now looks like this:
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Much better* - this is something we could actually print, and if you don’t need any panelization, you could go through the File menu and choose Print… to do just that.
* You’ll notice that the holes in the pads and vias were slightly enlarged. You can prevent this by editing the drill-aid.ulp file and removing the 0.05mm overlap tweak on line 25.
However, we do want to DIY panelize, so let’s continue with actually exporting this to an image that we can then process.
Exporting the layers to an image
Go to File, Export… and then choose Image, or enter the command EXPORT IMAGE. You’ll then be presented with the Export Image dialog.
In it, perform the following:
](http://imgur.com/ca9K2)
Placing the image in the image editor
Start up The GIMP - this will take a few seconds.
Because we exported to the Clipboard we don’t have to look through any folders for a particular file and can paste the exported Eagle board image straight to a new GIMP image.
( This does have one down side: the DPI setting isn’t included with the Clipboard. If you export to a PNG file instead, the DPI setting will be included and automatically read by most image editors, including The GIMP. )
Go to the Edit menu, Paste As… and choose New Image - or press ctrl+shift+v (default keyboard shortcut).
The result should be something like this (depending on your Eagle window’s size if you exported the Window):
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As you can see, this is pretty much exactly what we’d want for DIY printing of the bottom of a board. There’s a lot of white space around the board that we don’t need, however.
Go to the Image menu, and choose Autocrop. That will remove the excess space:
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DIY panelizing a single board
Now we’ve got the board ready for DIY panelization. The GIMP makes this very easy through the Tile filter.
Go to the Filters menu, Map and choose Tile.
You’ll get a new dialog where you can specify a new size for the image. Change the little dropdown on the right to % (percent), and enter the percentages you’d need for your desired panelization. For example, setting the Width to 300% and the Height to 200% (click on the little chainlink image to allow you to enter two different values) will result in a 3x2 panelization.
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Press the OK button and inspect the result:
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This should be ready for printing. However, personally, I like a little space between my boards because my saw blade is not infinitely thin. Close this GIMP image and go back to the single board in The GIMP.
Now would be a good time to double-check / set the image’s DPI matching that which you used when you exported the image from Eagle.
Go to the Image menu and choose Print Size….
You’ll get a new dialog where you can specify the print size of the image. If you used the Clipboard export option following this write-up, then you’ll notice that it is incorrectly set to 72DPI. Change it to the DPI value you used to export - in this write-up, 600 DPI - and press the OK button.
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Now to add a little extra space around the board.
Go to the Image menu and choose Canvas Size….
Once again, a new dialog pops up, in which you can change the size of the image’s canvas, without changing the size your board (which would be bad).
The image will now have 1mm of extra space on the bottom and on the right. Don’t worry about the checkerboard pattern, that’s just image editors’ way of letting you know there’s no colors there.
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Let’s fill those in with white and prepare the image for panelization again.
Make sure the background color is white (if it isn’t, click on the color swatch and make it so);
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Then go to the Image menu and choose Flatten Image.
Now try the Tile filter again, and the result should be a little more sawblade-friendly:
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Printing the panel
Now all that is needed is to actually print the boards.
Go to the File menu and choose Page Setup… to make sure the correct paper size and orientation are selected.
Next go to the File menu and choose Print…. You’ll get a fairly standard printer selection dialog, with one extra tab - Image Settings. Make sure the correct printer is selected and change any printer settings as you would in any other print dialog.
Go to the Image Settings tab and make sure that the X resolution and Y resolution are still correctly set. If they aren’t, change them here, or change the Image’s Print Size the same way you did on the single board.
You can change the panel’s position on the sheet here as well, if desired or required by the medium you’re printing onto.
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Once done, press the Print button and check the output from the printer. If all went well, you should have what you need for the board’s bottom layer.
The Top layer
Now to do the Top layer, we have to go through mostly the same steps as before. However, we’ll want to choose different layers:
Run the command DISPLAY NONE 1 17 18 20 116 (116 is the drill guide!):
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Export again, paste to The GIMP, go through the panelization steps:
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Now go to Print the image. If you have a reasonably modern printer, you can tell the printer to print a mirrored image. If your printer cannot print a mirrored image, you’ll have to mirror it manually:
Go to the Image menu, Transform and choose Flip Horizontally. The image is now mirrored, and ready for printing.
In the end, you should have your print(s) ready for toner transfer or UV exposure (photosensitive PCB boards). If you are doing a two-sided DIY, take extra care to align the two printouts. Put the two printouts on top of eachother and hold them up to the light to ensure that they do overlap correctly; you don’t want to realize that you added 1mm of spacing between boards in the Bottom layer but 1,5mm in the Top layer after you’ve etched the PCBs.
Attachment
The attached file is the above write-up in HTML with images included, as online image hosts tend to drop uploads.
Edit: PS, this mostly applies to large panelization with the lower Eagle license levels. If you’ve got the Professional license, you should be fine using run panelize (this moves text from tName to a non-dynamic layer so that each board keeps the same values), then group your board, cut it, and paste it however many times you need for the panelization - or use array_board*.ulp from the CadSoft downloads section. From there on you can hide/show layers and print straight from Eagle once more.](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)](Imgur: The magic of the Internet)
Thank you so much!! that was an awesome tutorial, i really appreciate it.
Needs to be a sticky
… and an instructable