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Old October 28th 07, 01:47 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.homebrew
Doug White Doug White is offline
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Oct 2007
Posts: 9
Default How do you make RF circuit boards?

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Sometimes, at work, I need to make, or have made, an RF PCB board to
test an RF part. For example, a surface mount 2-way power divider, up
to say 4 GHz. We have regular g10? copper clad, a PCB millimg machine.
Is a 50 ohms trace about .1 in wide in this material? What is
advantage of FR and Duriod? Is TXLINE a good program to determine
trace widths? Any good books on RF boards?
Any tips would be very appriciated.


I use APPCAD (free) to calculate line widths & impedances:

http://www.hp.woodshot.com/appcad/appcad.htm

For a given dielectric & impedance, the ratio of line width to thickness
is constant, so thinner boards mean thinner lines for a given impedance.
A 1/16" G-10 board requires about 110 mils of width for 50 Ohms.

G10/FR4 is OK up to several GHz, but it begins to get lossy and the
impedance won't be as tightly controlled as with a "real" RF board
material. It's OK to get a signal from A to B, but it ins't good for
filters.

Doug White