I think I just did one of the stupidest things ever...

[Hal]

I spent the last 45 minutes or so designing a PCB for a rangemaster.  I thought I was good to go.  Until I realized that I drew the traces on what would obviously be the bottom, but when I designed it, I didnt realize it would have to be fliped.  Moral of the story, when I flip the board, the pot faces in-wards (the pins on the pot are a right triangle).  Not to hard to fix, but pretty damn stupid :-D

and I had to share.  Dont' do it!

edit: OOOH really easy fix.  Sharpie comes off coper clad VERY easily with a little rubbing alcohol.

[brian wenz]

Hello Hello---
  I did that a few years ago......I just kept going and somehow got the thing to work!
Brian.

[puretube]

I used to notice such mistakes not before  after  etching...  :evil:  :shock:  :twisted:

[Apehouse]

I thought I was good to go.  Until I realized that I drew the traces on what would obviously be the bottom, but when I designed it, I didnt realize it would have to be fliped

Yep. When i first discovered expressPCB it really clicked with me. I found it very easy to use which ended up being my downfall because instead of checking it out thoroughly before i used it, i jumped right in and desinged my first board. Fortunatly it was a simple one with transitors and it fired right up. My next pcb was the bass-thru schematic which has 2 IC's in it.  Thru the entire process i didn't remotely snap that i was designing/working on the wrong side of the board until i went to fire it up and nothing happened. When it finally dawned on me during the trouble-shooting process that the IC's were reversed, i was an odd combination of amazed/amused/frustrated/and well educated. It certainly drove the point home with me. The orientation of my parts, labels and such is always in my head as i'm working on something. A lesson (i can say in hindsight) i certainly needed to learn.
BTW i ended up soldering the ic sockets on the copper side and it fired right up. Looks a little odd when you look at it mounted in the box with no visible ic's tho.
 -greg

[Rick]

Yes, me too, I'm guilty, sometimes far too much in a hurry to get it done. I now have a backwards Rat. Noticed the mistake after the etching, but not to waste it, I soldered the IC to the reverse side (copper - only way to fix it at this point) and made sure the rest of the polarized components were aiming the right way, and yeah worked first shot. Sounds great, but maybe a little left handed.  :wink: I verify the boards now beforehand as to flip or not to flip before I end up with the same scenario when soldering. ...Rick

[Marcos - Munky]

I done this thing a few times, but I usually see this after etch the board. In a circuit without ICs, no problem. But in a circuit with a IC, sometimes is hard to fix. You can bend the IC legs to fit the socket, but "reversed", but you can't bend them again to return to normal position, because they will break.

[David]

Yep.  Me too!  I laid out a board according to a schematic.  Oops!  Fortunately, I figured out what would happen BEFORE I printed it.  I just inverted my layout, then printed it.  My problem is that when I read a schematic, I interpret it as if I'm looking down on the component side of a PCB.  This gave me fits when I was building a Smash Drive.

[Doug_H]

When I built my firefly amp, I drew up a nice neat layout on the computer with one minor error: all the tube sockets were numbered upside down. :shock:  No wonder it didn't work when I first turned it on...

It was wired point to point with everything positioned around the "correct" pins on the sockets. So naturally there went my "nice neat" layout.

It's a rats nest now but it works!

Doug