Routing is honestly one of my favorite parts of making a PCB, there's something about the feeling of understanding exactly what each trace is doing that I find exhilarating.
The problem with most AI powered tools is that they don't understand the context of your board, which is absolutely crucial for routing. Like so-and-so trace could be switching really fast and an AI powered design tool wouldn't understand that and wouldn't route it properly. Or like power for example, different things have different power requirements and I feel like we're not at the point where these tools are referencing every datasheet on the planet to figure out trace/fill sizes and whatnot.
There's also some concepts I don't think these tools can wrap around quite yet. For example, minimizing loops, consistent ground planes, proper impedance control, and just all of these factors lead to an inferior board.
Not saying that humans are perfect and understand all of these too, I just feel like if you understand what's happening with your board, you can do a much better job.
At the end of the day, you'll be spending more time fixing the mistakes, which are actually pretty hard to spot without checking every single trace sometimes, then actually just routing it yourself, but maybe one day we'll get there!
I'm probably going to run Marlin just because it would be the first 3D printer I've actually made and I've heard it's more beginner friendly. I think Klipper also needs a dedicated host like a Pi which is a bit more overheard I don't want to worry about, but I'm open to exploring any type of firmware!
Very cool, keep it up and I'm really curious if you manage to drive a printer with it and what kind of functionality you're going to achieve. Keep an eye on things like accelerometers and filament runout sensors in the toolhead, those are becoming more and more complex.
4 layer boards actually make it easier instead of more advanced in my opinion. You can have a dedicated ground and power plane which makes routing much simpler, and the fields are much easier to predict.
It's also just double the price, so I can get 4 layer boards for like $8 from JLC and it just makes everything much more easily.
You still do want to build up to it though, I made a macropad, then a keyboard, and then made this, so it's definitely not just an immediate jump, but I built those 2 projects within the span of a couple months!
I have a couple idea's on how I wanted to do it:
- Belt printer fitted into a briefcase (the harbor freight case form factor would be good for that!)
- Positron style
- Maybe mess around with double four-bars
Making it self-contained with a battery is also a really cool concept I'll have to explore!
The website went down because of the traffic and large images, so I've temporarily switched hosting, and it should stay up now (DNS propagation might take a bit though), but I'm going to get those images smaller ASAP, thanks to everyone who posted web archives!
I'm also going to alter some of the reasoning for some of the stuff like decoupling capacitors, but the guide is still meant for complete beginners, and lots of the terminology/reasoning can be pretty overwhelming, and I still have a lot to learn about decoupling/other stuff!
I'll also add a part about what you actually need on your devboard, that's a great suggestion!
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