While some PCB art tends to be a bit chunky (think 2 square inches or so), nothing says you cannot make items smaller.
PCB manufacturers typically price design fabrication by the square inch. So I decided to make 1 inch (2.54 cm) square 5-1/4"-style floppy earrings with PCBs. They will go next to the 3-1/2"-style floppy earrings I wear frequently that are made out of plastic (above). They are also about 1" square so they should weigh roughly the same and dangle similarly.
Board manufacturers typically specify how many copies of the board you will receive in your order. Three or five is typical and you can always order more. I ordered from OSH Park, which provides a minimum of three, which will make two earrings and one pendant out of the order, which works very well.
You don't need to lay out multiple copies of your board design on a panel, that is done by the board house.
The image above is a free clipart depiction of a 5.25" floppy disk. I used this as a visual model for sketching my own design in Affinity Designer 2.
The new layer appears on the right side of Affinity Designer 2. If you click on the word Layer1 that is circled here, you can change the name of the layer to match the layer you are working on, such as F.Cu or F.SilkS.
The design of the 5.25" floppy consists of:
- An
Edge.Cutslayer with a 1" x 1" rounded rectangle. - An
F.SilkSlayer with a rounded rectangle in the upper left corner as the floppy front label. - A
B.SilkSlayer with a rounded rectangle in the upper left as a floppy back label (as I wanted it to look like a floppy if it twisted around) - A
Drillslayer with three holes: a small one in the upper right for earring wires, a large central Hub hole, and a smaller index hole to the right and below the hub hole. - An
F.Culayer and aB.Culayer that spans a bit beyond the silkscreen areas so as to not show a gap. -
F.MaskandB.Masklayers that have two rounded rectangles for the surface medium at the bottom of each side, a circle bigger than the hub drill hole to expose some material, and a bit bigger circle around the index hole. Remember this layer you put things where you DO NOT want the solder mask applied.
If you open the Affinity Source File, you can browse each layer and see the shapes that make up the Floppy design. You can change things to suit your own design if you wish.
To keep it simple, I did not include any edge notches.
In Affinity Designer 2, the layers look like this:
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