Current Part:
Soldering Iron
Solder
Copper PCB Board
Glossy Laser Jet Paper
LM317 Variable Voltage Reg
Variable 5kΩ Resistors
240Ω Resistors
10uF Capacitors
DC Power Jack
12v Power Adapter
SIPs
Parts List Details
You may or may not be familiar with the parts above so a picture of each item has been included to help give you an idea of what they look like. I'll go through and explain each part briefly below.
Clothing Iron
This will be used when transferring the toner on the printed glossy paper to the PCB copper board. The heat from the iron is enough to warm the toner (ink) from the paper and transfer it to the PCB board.
Soldering Iron
Since we're building a PCB board we're eventually going to have to connect all the parts together. To do that we'll solder them which is the standard way of connecting components to PCB boards.
Copper PCB Board
A standard copper PCB board that is meant to be used for PCB purposes. These can be found at any electronics store or online for discount prices. Copper boards are generally not very expensive.
LM317
This is the variable voltage regulator used to output unique voltages even though the power adapter will be inputting 12v to the system. The LM317 is able to step the voltages down to appropriate values dependant upon the resistor values in a voltage divider.
Cadsoft Eagle Layout Software
This program was not mentioned in the list of parts. This CAD program was used to draw the circuit that will be used for this PCB. You can download the program for free with limited functionality. The theory portion of this tutorial will briefly cover how to use Eagle.