Good packages to include on breakout board

Community PCB Design
1

I’m going to make a GP order soon for a breakout for a TI MSP uC. I’m not using the deal because the pitch on this particular package, 80LQFP, is JUST less than 8 mils. I’m just taking each pin straight to a header which will align with a breadboard. I have plenty of extra space on each board and since I will have many of these boards, I wanted to include other packages that could be hooked up to the same pinouts. I’ve already got a 64 QFP right inside the larger one since they fit together perfectly.

Obviously each board could only be used for one IC at a time since they’ll be sharing signals. So my question is… what other common packages should I include? I am set up to etch boards so I can do all the big ones but packages with pitch smaller than 15 mils get pretty messy… Any suggestions? Thanks!

2

Make sure to include spots for the external crystals (required in some MSP430s before they gained default internal oscillators). Putting the crystal far away physically is never a great idea.

3

The 80LQFP is a 0.5mm pitch package - why can’t you implement this within BatchPCB’s 0.008" track / spacing rule?

Even if it means changing the recommended footprint slightly, you should be fine, and it might save you forking out for a whole panel…

4

0.5mm is almost 20mils.

You could set the clearance to 8mils and the pad with to almost 12mils.