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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Copper Pour - yes/no/why?
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panky Guru  Joined: 02/10/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1116 |
Recently started playing around with PCB design and, looking at other folks work, noticed that some have copper pour and others do not. Would appreciated any comments on where/when it is either apprpriate or necessary to use copper pour. panky ... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it! |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9755 |
I design all my boards with copper pour/Ground-plane if there is room for it. On some really small boards, it is too tricky to connect up all the little bits of GP, so I use ground tracks instead. I started doing that mainly when I was etching boards here at home. Having a GP means the board etches much faster, and you don't need to etch away all the extra copper. This just carried on over to when I started getting boards made professionally. I normally connect the GP to circuit ground, and it then forms a handy low-impedance ground reference for anything that needs a ground. Pretty much ALL boards that have anything to do with RF circuits, use a GP. Often these boards are arranged as all surface mount or parts with legs that are soldered to lands on the top copper, and the bottom copper is just a blank copper at ground potential. They do this for shielding, as RF is a very unforgiving mistress if you get it wrong, unlike many other circuits which don't really care so long as the connections are there.  With four-layer boards, it is very common to find that the two inner layers are your power-supply. One layer is a ground, and the other layer is your Vcc. These inner layers can be either discrete tracks, or a GP for each layer, and the through holes just connect to the ground or Vcc layer where they need to. This is not scripture though, and I often use the inner layers for signal routing, and the top and bottom copper pours for a ground. That has the advantage of helping to shield the signal tracks in high-frequency boards. The E100 PCB is arranged like that. Basically, you can use it or not - up to you. For RF work, you generally MUST use it. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| erbp Senior Member  Joined: 03/05/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 195 |
The first PCB I designed was supposed to have a copper pour connected as a Ground Plane on both upper and lower sides, but as I didn't really know what I was doing I apparently created the gerber files without the copper poured, thus my boards had no copper pour when I got them. No problem, they work fine, even having some SPI connections running at 10MHz. On my second PCB I remembered to pour the copper before creating the gerbers, so got boards with Ground Planes. They also work fine. The one difference I have noticed is that for through hole components, it takes more heat to solder the ground pin connections in order to get a decent flow of solder through the plated hole around the component lead, especially to the opposite side of the board. I was surprised how much heat is conducted away to the surrounding copper pour by the 4 small spokes connecting the ground pads to the GP. Its not a problem, but I think my preference in future will be not to use a copper pour unless there is a specific reason to do so. Cheers, Phil. |
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| panky Guru Joined: 02/10/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1116 |
Thanks guys, interesting and informative comments, Cheers, panky ... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it! |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2971 |
Gday Panky, I `generally' use Copper Pour as an attempt to provide some shielding.. How effective this is is debatable.. On very thin boards such as my MuP-TTL , NanoMite and its bigger brother PicoMite (No manual exists Yet). The copper pour acts to provide some strength to the PCB as they are only 0.8mm thick (About 0.31") Kind Regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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CaptainBoing Guru Joined: 07/09/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2171 |
+1 and I just like the look better than bare bare board |
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| bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2971 |
Hi Capn, All, Plus screen print looks much better if you can locate it over a copper poured area.. Unfortunately my boards tend to be rather `tight' so I dont always have this benefit. Kind Regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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Chopperp Guru Joined: 03/01/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1106 |
@bigmik Do you have a manual or any other info yet pretty please? ChopperP |
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| ceptimus Senior Member Joined: 05/07/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 130 |
Also, if you're etching your own boards, they etch faster and the etching solution lasts longer as there's less copper to be dissolved. |
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