The “PCB Designing using KiCad Workshop” in collaboration with IETE SAKEC was organized by Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering Department on 9th October, 2021 in M.S Teams platform. The event was conducted and coordinated by Ms. Lakshmi Iyer, Assistant Professor, Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering Department under the guidance of ISF coordinator Prof. T. P. Vinutha, H.O.D of Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering Department. Total 26 students participated for this workshop.
The workshop began by Prof. T.P Vinutha, H.O.D. EXTC department and IETE-ISF Coordinator addressing all the participants at 10A.M. It was then followed by Ms. Lakshmi Iyer introducing students to the concept of General-purpose board & PCB.
Students were explained in detail the importance of various layers involved in PCB like solder mask, silkscreen, copper pour etc. The speaker then introduced the Open source software tool of KiCad and explained its functionality and its entire design flow. An example of 5V Regulated Power supply was taken and its PCB was designed. Students performed the entire Schematic flow using Eeschema right from setting up the page layout, adding and annotating symbols, associating each one of them with its footprint, doing ERC and generating the netlist. Once the netlist was produced, the students were introduced to PCBnew tool on KiCad where they imported the netlist, created tracks, copper fills and did DRC and finally generated the required files for manufacturing.
Students were also shown various ventures that they can make use of while sourcing their components and also were demonstrated a video which will be helpful for them to understand on designing PCB at home.
The session then ended with a vote of thanks along with feedback and the speaker appreciated all the students for their efforts put it to successfully design a PCB on KiCad.
