this style is actually magnificent like, from a glance, it's still a 45 degree locked, boring board, but shall you look closer, you'll see beautiful curved traces
@@TruDruChocolateMilk Doing great, I've been working ofna really cool secret project, but it'll probably be a few more months before I announce and release it.
As an avionics repair tech, I have sense of dread every time I see rounded runs. It has nothing to do with the runs but rather the age and tolerances of the components. Every board that was hand drawn is a monster to troubleshoot. Even seeing the melted boards in this video gives me that sense of dread.
Hand drawn boards are easier to troubleshoot for me. It's easier to find stuff on the solder side because each section of the trace pattern in much more distinct than on CAD boards.
4:40 this is not the only argument against this type of design. It's also harder for a human to follow the traces and therefore increases the difficulty of repair.
@@larrybud Yeap. Like counting pencils that have been randomly thrown on the table vs counting ones which have been laid next to each other. It might have its uses for extremely tight layouts, but I don't like it for that reason.
I did suffer a strong moment of stress when I saw that board and decides it's a "not buy" parameter for me when looking for electronics to buy. It was just radiating too much chaos. Might be because I once did design with wire-wrap, and remember the hell of tracing wires.
@@perwestermark8920 Point to point for the win. This stuff here, I don't care how it was done, is never impressive, unless I can tell no computer was involved. Doing anything by hand requires skill, any chimp can use a computer.
@@MadScientist267 You may think any chimp can use a computer. But what do you think a chimp can acctually accomplish? Any chimp can use a typewriter too - but what great stories have you seen chimps produce? Seems it takes a bit of extra skills to write a new Hamlet or Murder on The Orient Express or The Lord of the Rings maybe Anna Karenina.
1:30 I would argue that MOST styles are 'born from limitations,' The gorgeous angularity and serifed fonts of Roman writing came from the limitation of having to chisel the characters into stone, and the 70's era 'checkbook font' that helped define what was futuristic in that era was born from making a font that was both human-readable AND readable by a machine scanning the magnetic ink at high speed.
You can talk track routing plugins for KiCad whenever you want 🙂 I'll be here for it. The concept of "lowest possible energy" is something that I deeply appreciate, as both a programmer and a lazy person.
Also, arbitrary angle routing can aid in track delay matching, because of the effect the fiber weave has on the length of parallel signals on multiples of 90 degrees and 45 degrees.
Definitely thought I was going to be watching you throw a bunch of PCBs into a furnace but I was happily surprised that instead it was a KiCad plugin. Super easy to install with the package manager and awesome one-click results. Thank you!
One other problem I could see with highly optimized tracks like the ones you get with TopoR is maintenance. Those layouts are much harder to comprehend and to check for humans when you are searching for problems, both during design debugging and during repairs later
A good solution is to use the standard layout during prototyping, then optimize the layout for production so your boards are smaller and cost less to make
Old engineers are still debating with me that 45 degree tracks are the best choice. I heard this from even an RF engineer. Thank God, I can find videos like this to ease my pain.
There is another valid argument against the ruthlessly efficient routing approach (and for the record, I’m with you, I think it looks neat): it is more difficult to grasp it’s logical structure and discern how things may function, which on some (not all) designs, could hamper its ability to be iterated, improved upon, or repaired.
Yeah, it could easily result in one missing wire being routed and then the entire design looks totally different. It's also not super great for power circuit design, where you probably want to repeat a perfectly operating design to multiple boards rather than "optimize" each time
@@wefyb2 All valid points. That said, I do think there is plenty of room for circuit layouts that place a priority on aesthetics as well as efficiency and the more prosaic considerations that dictate most board designs. Even if one discounts the modern DIY and hobbyist trends that have resulted in a lot of devices that intentionally show off their internals with exposed circuitry and laser-cut acrylic cases--electronic engineering professionals have a long tradition of appreciating and critiquing PCB layouts and the skills involved in balancing all of the complex factors that go into them. It's certainly a rather impractical thing to do, but if I saw a board that was not only expertly laid out with efficient use of space, minimal reliance on vias, and proper placement of things like semiconductors and electrolytics to promote long-term reliability--but also employed beautifully flowing lines and artfully designed features, I'd appreciate the effort. But I'm also someone who will never be involved with any projects larger than one-off curiosities and personal endeavors, so shit like this for its own sake is perfectly acceptable in my opinion.
A point worth making. "Shorter traces" or even "fewer vias" (although I have a personal bias for these) may not even be rational objectives. I'd hope that ground plane optimisation (including pcb fills taking into account star grounding) is another area it might be interesting for this software to tackle. Ah, if only I had more spare time…
There are so many additional constrains which are hard to put into software. If we would use a perfect optimization at work, it would be a total nightmare. Any change could move a lot of stuff on the PCB, requiring a lot of re-qualification steps. Instead our "less efficient" designs allow most modifications to be done in a very local and efficient manner.
The design of the Topor boards is super interesting. Its how I imagine a computer building itself would arrange its own traces. Ruthless efficiency in an oddly organic aesthethic
I don't agree with the statement of "sharp edges are not a problem for modern manufacturing". Yes, when you order 100 pieces, it is not a problem. But when the production goes to 10's of millions or you are pushing the technology to its limits (with the circuit density), you will see very clearly where the defects most often are. Mainly relative to how little it costs to prevent them. With few 100 of pieces produced you will practically never see a 100ppm rate defect, so it does not make much sense to spend even a single minute of extra effort on it during the design. But with a 10 mil production we are talking about 1000 defective pieces. And that becomes way other story with relation to how much extra design effort still pays off to address these.
As a junior engineer at my first job I designed my first PCB with free angles, being inspired by audio equipment of the 80s. That was indeed like placing rubber bands in PADS. I collected a harsh response from everyone who saw my design, going as far as denying me a promotion, probably because of that, and other acts of not conforming to peer pressure. Now I work in space industry and already proved myself numerous times. I admit that while switching jobs I give a clear warning that I'm not taking any orders or advice that have no solid reasoning behind it. Excellent video, got subscribed for more.
The only other critique i can come up with for topologically perfect circuit boards is on-board repairability, but even that can be a non-issue. I'm sure it's useful for bleeding edge tech and extremely space efficient requirements, i.e. cubesats. Very interesting!
My dad works at a company that does a lot of hardware development for the automotive industry, he had a project a while ago where he had to design hardware for a 100W coolant circulation pump that keeps pumping coolant after engine is shut off to prevent the water that was in the engine block at point of shutoff to overpressure and boil. The original spec was 25W at 130°C operating temperature in a 10x5x5cm ish form factor. Spec moved up to 100W during dev cycle, everything else stayed the same. Absolute nightmare that project.
@@Blacktronics As someone who works in automotive RnD as well, I can *feel* this on a spiritual level. Automotive engineers are a different breed, I tell ya. One day, the project leading engineer enters the room and surprisedly tells us that we need to build everything over from scratch - he kind of forgot that the engine dyno also needed to fit the ... uhm, you know ... the *exhaust* ? What? It's an engine, of course it's going to need one?! We had to tear down an almost complete construction and re-re-arrange almost everything back to where it *already was before* we re-arranged it in the first place. :|
I began making PCBs in 1975 with tape and a razor blade; both directly on copper for a single job, or on a mylar sheet to make multiple copies using positive photoresist. I experimented with curves and 90° and 45° angles. The end result was I made curved tracks for my personal projects, as curves were faster to draw and more reliable in the ferric chloride solution. But all customers loved angled tracks and the "professional" aesthetic of the finished PCB. I transitioned to ORCAD x DOS around 1988, and curved tracks were gone by then. My designs went up to 200 MHz operating frequency, and I never found any increase of EMI / RFI when compared to a rounded-track PCB. Over the years, I forgot about those wavy PCBs, with long strings of FND500 displays or arrays of memory chips crossed by waved tracks drawn by hand. Now, watching this video, I transfixed what I saw. You are trying to get good old wavy PCB tracks out of modern PCB routing software! I'm honoured. I bet you listen to music from vinyl disks with a Shure cartridge and a DC-coupled audio amplifier...
I like the idea, but the resultant circuit boards seem too orderly to me. wibbly 70's circuit boards had unsteady tracks, slightly wobbling in width and direction.
I wonder how well you could use a noise displacement algorithm, like is sometimes used to "simulate" handwritten text. It'd be hard because of fixed component pads and manufacturing tolerances, but could be neat.
You convinced me! I grew up with Elektor-PCBs and I liked their style. That was in the 70ies. Reading your title, I thought why and how I should "melt" my PCBs. And at the end, with your melted PCB, I'm ... just downloaded, installed and quickly checked. I think, you started a revolution!
Great work, this really improves the look of the circuit boards. I can see why Topo R isn’t very common, who would buy a mainboard, for example, that looks like it was designed by an intern on crack.
I actually clicked this video expecting to hear that some type of old circuit boards had easily recyclable material that one could recover by melting it. I'm not even mad, very interesting content.
I just want you to know that I saw your video almost a year ago and today I spent over 40 minutes looking for it online to watch it again and I didn't gave up until I found it, it is that good, so thanks for the upload.
Can't believe this video doesn't have more views. I'm a software engineer and know little about circuitry and electronics. But your arguments seem very grounded (pun intended), and I'm happy to believe that this is a pioneering trend in the making. I want to see more molten circuit boards!
This is great! I basically just finished manually routing a design that uses arbitrary angles and smooth corners because of space limitations. I will look into this and especially TopoR as I think these tools could really help in the kinds of designs I'm working on.
was thinking it will be really about melting and salvaging metals from PCBs LOL but the video kept me watching and i am glad i watch it... will try using your plugin for my next PCB design for sure... thanks for the great video
Never made a PCB myself but I've always been fascinated by the technology, ingenuity and engineering behind the design factor. I still remember the advert for CadSoft's (now Autodesk) EAGLE in early 90s electronic catalogues. Loved that Eagle logo.
On the contrary, I was excited to find out that this video was about a Kicad plugin! I plan on giving it a try for my next aesthetic project. Thank you for adding something great to the collective.
I was saddened by the plug-in ad and not being hot melting circuits design method but over I am very satisfied with this upload. Thank for I’ve learned something new
I was expecting to see a video about rounded tracks... Certainly not the "melting electronics" you've offered at the end of the video! You've made my day thank you for that.
As someone just stumbling in here with zero prior or related experience, the revelation that you can build rf filters by drawing triangles in the traces actually got me to exclaim out loud "Are you effing serious!?" Wow. mind blowing moment. Thanks for sharing.
I know nothing about circuit boards, and have never really paid any attention to them apart from a brief “huh, cool patterns”. Yet this video-for some reason-appeared on my recommended list and it was really very informative, entertaining and engaging. Great content, thanks!
Wow. Just adding a cubic bezier on those pads made it look so much better 👌👌. Ive always loved the look of old hand drawn traces, and now I can do it with ease! This would be FANTASTIC for retrofit projects such as replacement parts for old computers that have hand drawn traces.
Just wanted to say thanks. I've been working on a project for a while, and after watching figured it was a great idea save the one thing you mentioned; "ease of design". I'm using Kicad, and saw your plugin on the package manager! So, off I went with it and It's so amazing. It's actually helped me reach a higher component density, and it looks so beautiful.
Some of those circuits are running code that was written on ultrawide / 4k monitors, but formatted to a max of 80 char per line - because that was the max supported by the earliest terminals.
After seeing 3:25 I'm imagining a world where companies use see-through plastic (miss this era) for everything and have uniquely designed boards underneath
Amazing work! I was meddling with this idea a few years ago and ended giving up on it, feels good to know that someone else might pick it up! It's the joy of open source after all
I came across this vid by accident, but was thoroughly drawn in from the start. I took a lot of things apart in the 60's and 70's and I remember the fluid designs in old radios and walkie talkies of that era (and the peculiar odor of "Made In Japan" circuitry - "waxy" is as close as I can get to describing). Thanks for putting together a lovely and thought-provoking video. I'm just getting into circuit board design and taking a class on KiCad. I'll turn the instructor onto this vid!
I'm in the process of redesigning a PCB w/ thicker traces because I screwed up the toner transfer 3 times in a row. I'll now have to try this plugin on the result!
I had never considered that the thing about historical limitations of CAD software may have contributed to metro/subway system maps looking the same way.
I've been rounding my designs since 2010 only because I liked the look. I personally think the efficient trace designs from Topo-R looks really cool. Thank you for the gracious contribution to the art via the KiCAD plugin.
I know almost nothing about PCBs beyond the basics... I didn't even know the name for "pads" apparently. But this was a very compelling look into a world I know nothing about that didn't make me feel like an idiot for not understanding everything. Your prose is as smooth as your traces.
I'll probably never need to build my own electronics, but this was a very interesting video about circuit boards and why the tracks on them are tge way they are.
I was click baited into a pleasant informative video and in the end, it satisfied me with a visual and audible simulation of circuit boards melting, which gave me chills throughout my body. If there is such a channel that is dedicated to these simulations, I would love to subscribe as I did to this one.
To accentuate the "radiate on corners" point. The actual energy of a signal always is within the EM fields between a track and the ground plane. Signals like people "travel through the halls [dielectric], not the walls [traces/ground plane]". But remember at 2:30, that it's not about the frequency, but the edge rate of a signal that matters. (insert Eric Bogatin lecture here). IMO: Corners have been the escape goat of bad EMC/EMI performance when folks forget that ground via stitching, having close ground planes to your signals, loop area (as you mentioned) and smart stackups / layer placement in those stackups affect things more. Corners are a problem in electronics, but only when you work at high voltages and then you've got a risk of corona discharge.
Makes sense when you just start rounding off corners, sure. But in the exposition, on the macro scale of the circuit, I'd argue that you might be missing the point that straight lines are more trackable, and make debugging (read: not the designer, but, the person tasked with doing diagnostics) a million times easier. Try debugging some board with dozens of chips, dozens of resistors, and dozens of other components, running seemingly arbitrary path turns, versus squared off tracks.
"ruthlessly effective" PCB looks incredibly cool. I'd say, it borrows from earlier, hand-drawn designs a bit, with it's weird placement of ICs and tracks, but there it's perfected to highest state.
You never disappoint. Going to download that ASAP I recently made a python code (no clue how to make it a plugin) that deletes all pads that are on the same side as a THT component for the purpose of generating layouts for boards without plated through-holes. Also works for single-sided boards, not that it’s very necessary. It’s a good step towards getting a hassle-free home etch. Maybe I’ll try to make it into a plugin, assuming someone hasn’t beaten me to the punch. I’ve never really looked at existing plugins before, so it would be neat if you had any recommendations.
As someone who started PCB designing with Bishop Tape, it is nice to see this aesthetic again. when my Pi5 ever shows up I will be trying this on Kicad, thanks. Love the Brass stuff too. And those melting semiconductors at the end probably took some serious effort to create. Inspiring, will be trying Blender 4 on Pi5 too.
4:13 I explain everything in TopoR, my colleagues laughed at first, but when I started giving out 3-4 simple PCBs a day, and a couple of complex ones, they changed their views on it.
Im not an electrical engineer, however i did have a job building and repairing/modifying prototype pcbs. The thought of working on those "efficient" pcbs fills me with a fear i didnt know i had.
The one thing to keep in mind with sharp corners in terms of high speed design is that the *clock* frequency doesn't matter, it's the rise/fall time that sets the signal bandwidth, so even with a circuit clocking at 100kHz you almost certainly have 200MHz+ bandwidth components if you're using modern CMOS, and probably much higher for faster MCUs like ESP32.
![[UNCUT] รัฐสั่งหยุดปล่อยคลื่น! แต่หยุดพลังปะทุ “น้องหญิง” ไม่ได้ I คนดังนั่งเคลียร์](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RmQh47eIiV0/mqdefault.jpg)
I’m convinced. The age of buttery smooth circuit boards is now. Real traces have CURVES.
I should have expected you here.
Hold on, I was just on one of your videos just before watching this one. I love the Gridfinity that you made.
this style is actually magnificent
like, from a glance, it's still a 45 degree locked, boring board, but shall you look closer, you'll see beautiful curved traces
*b u t t e r y*
You said the words. We're expecting it now.
The efficient routing looks like one of those datacenters with a million ethernet cables going from switch to switcu
No way! rebane from house of god that’s crazy! How are you doing?
@@TruDruChocolateMilk Doing great, I've been working ofna really cool secret project, but it'll probably be a few more months before I announce and release it.
@@rebane2001 dude I can’t wait! Good luck on it!
haha yeah same kind of planned chaos feel
Idk man, most I've seen look like a rat's nest
As an avionics repair tech, I have sense of dread every time I see rounded runs. It has nothing to do with the runs but rather the age and tolerances of the components. Every board that was hand drawn is a monster to troubleshoot. Even seeing the melted boards in this video gives me that sense of dread.
Hand drawn boards are easier to troubleshoot for me. It's easier to find stuff on the solder side because each section of the trace pattern in much more distinct than on CAD boards.
straight lines help a lot
I work in aviation electronics engineering and even though it's for the military I will now melt all my circuits in hopes you see one eventually :)
this video being recommended to all the avionics techs lol👋
Hey! Its cool to find a handful avionics engineers here!. Whats your opinion about your profession?
Im in university doing computer engg 😄
4:40 this is not the only argument against this type of design. It's also harder for a human to follow the traces and therefore increases the difficulty of repair.
I was going to make that same argument.
@@larrybud Yeap. Like counting pencils that have been randomly thrown on the table vs counting ones which have been laid next to each other. It might have its uses for extremely tight layouts, but I don't like it for that reason.
I did suffer a strong moment of stress when I saw that board and decides it's a "not buy" parameter for me when looking for electronics to buy. It was just radiating too much chaos.
Might be because I once did design with wire-wrap, and remember the hell of tracing wires.
@@perwestermark8920 Point to point for the win.
This stuff here, I don't care how it was done, is never impressive, unless I can tell no computer was involved. Doing anything by hand requires skill, any chimp can use a computer.
@@MadScientist267 You may think any chimp can use a computer. But what do you think a chimp can acctually accomplish?
Any chimp can use a typewriter too - but what great stories have you seen chimps produce? Seems it takes a bit of extra skills to write a new Hamlet or Murder on The Orient Express or The Lord of the Rings maybe Anna Karenina.
1:30 I would argue that MOST styles are 'born from limitations,' The gorgeous angularity and serifed fonts of Roman writing came from the limitation of having to chisel the characters into stone, and the 70's era 'checkbook font' that helped define what was futuristic in that era was born from making a font that was both human-readable AND readable by a machine scanning the magnetic ink at high speed.
You can talk track routing plugins for KiCad whenever you want 🙂 I'll be here for it.
The concept of "lowest possible energy" is something that I deeply appreciate, as both a programmer and a lazy person.
Programmers are naturally industriously lazy, finding pleasure that we can now exert less energy on a task after an initial cost to automate it.
Also, arbitrary angle routing can aid in track delay matching, because of the effect the fiber weave has on the length of parallel signals on multiples of 90 degrees and 45 degrees.
@@FreeTheUyghurs ah yes, a simple joy of automating a 2 minute task for 5 hours just to do it once. "E" stands for **e**fficiency in "joy"
@@Shonicheck hey I said we had ambitions not that we were smart.
Being lazy is probably one of the best selling points for a programmer and I find that hilarious sometimes.
Love the idea of the teardrops being “dipped in honey”
It's like salted caramel, just better and more dramatic.
i find smoothed tracks allow for much faster cutting of diy pcbs on an engraver, smooth corners having lower acceleration than right angles.
That's a very interesting point, thanks for mentioning!
plus it's hard to make a square corner with a rotating bit ;-)
Definitely thought I was going to be watching you throw a bunch of PCBs into a furnace but I was happily surprised that instead it was a KiCad plugin. Super easy to install with the package manager and awesome one-click results. Thank you!
One other problem I could see with highly optimized tracks like the ones you get with TopoR is maintenance. Those layouts are much harder to comprehend and to check for humans when you are searching for problems, both during design debugging and during repairs later
So they're good to discourage reverse engineering.
@@alejandroperez5368 that is one way of looking at it.
@@alejandroperez5368 now that's the apple mindset
I agree, maintainability is the main reason most code style guides forbid having fun too 😅
A good solution is to use the standard layout during prototyping, then optimize the layout for production so your boards are smaller and cost less to make
Old engineers are still debating with me that 45 degree tracks are the best choice. I heard this from even an RF engineer. Thank God, I can find videos like this to ease my pain.
There is another valid argument against the ruthlessly efficient routing approach (and for the record, I’m with you, I think it looks neat): it is more difficult to grasp it’s logical structure and discern how things may function, which on some (not all) designs, could hamper its ability to be iterated, improved upon, or repaired.
Yeah, it could easily result in one missing wire being routed and then the entire design looks totally different.
It's also not super great for power circuit design, where you probably want to repeat a perfectly operating design to multiple boards rather than "optimize" each time
@@wefyb2 All valid points. That said, I do think there is plenty of room for circuit layouts that place a priority on aesthetics as well as efficiency and the more prosaic considerations that dictate most board designs. Even if one discounts the modern DIY and hobbyist trends that have resulted in a lot of devices that intentionally show off their internals with exposed circuitry and laser-cut acrylic cases--electronic engineering professionals have a long tradition of appreciating and critiquing PCB layouts and the skills involved in balancing all of the complex factors that go into them.
It's certainly a rather impractical thing to do, but if I saw a board that was not only expertly laid out with efficient use of space, minimal reliance on vias, and proper placement of things like semiconductors and electrolytics to promote long-term reliability--but also employed beautifully flowing lines and artfully designed features, I'd appreciate the effort. But I'm also someone who will never be involved with any projects larger than one-off curiosities and personal endeavors, so shit like this for its own sake is perfectly acceptable in my opinion.
A point worth making. "Shorter traces" or even "fewer vias" (although I have a personal bias for these) may not even be rational objectives. I'd hope that ground plane optimisation (including pcb fills taking into account star grounding) is another area it might be interesting for this software to tackle. Ah, if only I had more spare time…
And it completely ignores e.g. cross-talk. It's suboptimal for anything remotely sensitive.
There are so many additional constrains which are hard to put into software. If we would use a perfect optimization at work, it would be a total nightmare. Any change could move a lot of stuff on the PCB, requiring a lot of re-qualification steps. Instead our "less efficient" designs allow most modifications to be done in a very local and efficient manner.
This is super neat, as a KiCad user I will definitely try the plugin. Thank you! I always loved the old hand drawn PCBs.
The design of the Topor boards is super interesting. Its how I imagine a computer building itself would arrange its own traces. Ruthless efficiency in an oddly organic aesthethic
I don't agree with the statement of "sharp edges are not a problem for modern manufacturing". Yes, when you order 100 pieces, it is not a problem. But when the production goes to 10's of millions or you are pushing the technology to its limits (with the circuit density), you will see very clearly where the defects most often are. Mainly relative to how little it costs to prevent them.
With few 100 of pieces produced you will practically never see a 100ppm rate defect, so it does not make much sense to spend even a single minute of extra effort on it during the design. But with a 10 mil production we are talking about 1000 defective pieces. And that becomes way other story with relation to how much extra design effort still pays off to address these.
Smart girl
@@alejandroperez5368 boring girl
@@gregdaweson4657 why is she boring?
@@alejandroperez5368 1000 defective pieces being bad enough to make boring pcbs is a sign of a boring person.
Only 1k faulty pcb's from 10 million? That's actually pretty good.
As a junior engineer at my first job I designed my first PCB with free angles, being inspired by audio equipment of the 80s. That was indeed like placing rubber bands in PADS. I collected a harsh response from everyone who saw my design, going as far as denying me a promotion, probably because of that, and other acts of not conforming to peer pressure. Now I work in space industry and already proved myself numerous times. I admit that while switching jobs I give a clear warning that I'm not taking any orders or advice that have no solid reasoning behind it. Excellent video, got subscribed for more.
The only other critique i can come up with for topologically perfect circuit boards is on-board repairability, but even that can be a non-issue. I'm sure it's useful for bleeding edge tech and extremely space efficient requirements, i.e. cubesats. Very interesting!
My dad works at a company that does a lot of hardware development for the automotive industry, he had a project a while ago where he had to design hardware for a 100W coolant circulation pump that keeps pumping coolant after engine is shut off to prevent the water that was in the engine block at point of shutoff to overpressure and boil.
The original spec was 25W at 130°C operating temperature in a 10x5x5cm ish form factor.
Spec moved up to 100W during dev cycle, everything else stayed the same.
Absolute nightmare that project.
@@Blacktronics As someone who works in automotive RnD as well, I can *feel* this on a spiritual level. Automotive engineers are a different breed, I tell ya.
One day, the project leading engineer enters the room and surprisedly tells us that we need to build everything over from scratch - he kind of forgot that the engine dyno also needed to fit the ... uhm, you know ... the *exhaust* ? What? It's an engine, of course it's going to need one?!
We had to tear down an almost complete construction and re-re-arrange almost everything back to where it *already was before* we re-arranged it in the first place. :|
New video let’s go!!
The renders at the end were very cool
man those simulations/renders at the end are so aesthetic. Especially the ones with the red LEDs. The music slaps too
I began making PCBs in 1975 with tape and a razor blade; both directly on copper for a single job, or on a mylar sheet to make multiple copies using positive photoresist.
I experimented with curves and 90° and 45° angles. The end result was I made curved tracks for my personal projects, as curves were faster to draw and more reliable in the ferric chloride solution. But all customers loved angled tracks and the "professional" aesthetic of the finished PCB.
I transitioned to ORCAD x DOS around 1988, and curved tracks were gone by then. My designs went up to 200 MHz operating frequency, and I never found any increase of EMI / RFI when compared to a rounded-track PCB. Over the years, I forgot about those wavy PCBs, with long strings of FND500 displays or arrays of memory chips crossed by waved tracks drawn by hand.
Now, watching this video, I transfixed what I saw. You are trying to get good old wavy PCB tracks out of modern PCB routing software! I'm honoured. I bet you listen to music from vinyl disks with a Shure cartridge and a DC-coupled audio amplifier...
the rubber band router designs are beautiful in their own way
I like the idea, but the resultant circuit boards seem too orderly to me. wibbly 70's circuit boards had unsteady tracks, slightly wobbling in width and direction.
I wonder how well you could use a noise displacement algorithm, like is sometimes used to "simulate" handwritten text. It'd be hard because of fixed component pads and manufacturing tolerances, but could be neat.
@@bob2859 Comic sans but for circuit design
@@spicybaguette7706 but procedural
@@spicybaguette7706 comic circs
Those Topor curves represent PURE EFFICIENCY, and there’s nothing cooler than that.
the animations at the end were amazing
You convinced me! I grew up with Elektor-PCBs and I liked their style. That was in the 70ies. Reading your title, I thought why and how I should "melt" my PCBs.
And at the end, with your melted PCB, I'm ... just downloaded, installed and quickly checked.
I think, you started a revolution!
Great work, this really improves the look of the circuit boards. I can see why Topo R isn’t very common, who would buy a mainboard, for example, that looks like it was designed by an intern on crack.
I actually clicked this video expecting to hear that some type of old circuit boards had easily recyclable material that one could recover by melting it. I'm not even mad, very interesting content.
I love that you did this on KiCAD and not some paid software 💚
Was for sure clickbaited but I'm not at all disappointed this is way cooler than melting circuit boards
I just want you to know that I saw your video almost a year ago and today I spent over 40 minutes looking for it online to watch it again and I didn't gave up until I found it, it is that good, so thanks for the upload.
Awesome. I’m just dipping my toes into PCB design in kicad. So this is a very timely video. Amazing content as always. Thanks!
This video is clear, informative, and have a story-like quality that kept me hooked until the very end. Keep up this amazing work!
Can't believe this video doesn't have more views.
I'm a software engineer and know little about circuitry and electronics.
But your arguments seem very grounded (pun intended), and I'm happy to believe that this is a pioneering trend in the making.
I want to see more molten circuit boards!
This is great! I basically just finished manually routing a design that uses arbitrary angles and smooth corners because of space limitations. I will look into this and especially TopoR as I think these tools could really help in the kinds of designs I'm working on.
This is the plugin that I've been wanting for ages. I love the look of melted boards. Thank you for doing this!
was thinking it will be really about melting and salvaging metals from PCBs LOL but the video kept me watching and i am glad i watch it... will try using your plugin for my next PCB design for sure... thanks for the great video
Never made a PCB myself but I've always been fascinated by the technology, ingenuity and engineering behind the design factor.
I still remember the advert for CadSoft's (now Autodesk) EAGLE in early 90s electronic catalogues. Loved that Eagle logo.
On the contrary, I was excited to find out that this video was about a Kicad plugin! I plan on giving it a try for my next aesthetic project. Thank you for adding something great to the collective.
I was saddened by the plug-in ad and not being hot melting circuits design method but over I am very satisfied with this upload. Thank for I’ve learned something new
I was expecting to see a video about rounded tracks... Certainly not the "melting electronics" you've offered at the end of the video! You've made my day thank you for that.
I especially enjoy the pour cast IC seemingly made entirely of bismuth during the simulation animation to wrap up.
I'm absolutely gobsmacked. I love the results and was already satisfied and then your threw in the fun animations. Instant subscribe!
That melty finale was a nice touch. Thanks for posting that rounding plugin for kicad!
As someone just stumbling in here with zero prior or related experience, the revelation that you can build rf filters by drawing triangles in the traces actually got me to exclaim out loud "Are you effing serious!?" Wow. mind blowing moment. Thanks for sharing.
I know nothing about circuit boards, and have never really paid any attention to them apart from a brief “huh, cool patterns”. Yet this video-for some reason-appeared on my recommended list and it was really very informative, entertaining and engaging. Great content, thanks!
Wow. Just adding a cubic bezier on those pads made it look so much better 👌👌. Ive always loved the look of old hand drawn traces, and now I can do it with ease! This would be FANTASTIC for retrofit projects such as replacement parts for old computers that have hand drawn traces.
Love the hand-routed look, very neat.
Just wanted to say thanks.
I've been working on a project for a while, and after watching figured it was a great idea save the one thing you mentioned; "ease of design". I'm using Kicad, and saw your plugin on the package manager! So, off I went with it and It's so amazing. It's actually helped me reach a higher component density, and it looks so beautiful.
Been doing this stuff manually for years. You, my friend, are a hero. Thank you
Some of those circuits are running code that was written on ultrawide / 4k monitors, but formatted to a max of 80 char per line - because that was the max supported by the earliest terminals.
I appreciate the addition of beauty to a utilitarian component.
After seeing 3:25 I'm imagining a world where companies use see-through plastic (miss this era) for everything and have uniquely designed boards underneath
You're going to love it when I tell you how a TV works
This was the most captivating presentation on circuit board design I've ever seen
Amazing work! I was meddling with this idea a few years ago and ended giving up on it, feels good to know that someone else might pick it up! It's the joy of open source after all
Man.. what an amazing video. I never knew I would care at all about the subject, but I'm definitely glad I sat here and watched it all. 10/10
Dude, such a big fan of your work. Tech savvy whimsy of the highest order. Great stuff
I saw the thumbnail and clicked, expecting to see a video of solder melting during SMT assembly. This was way better.
4:06 “yeah, my room’s a little messy,”
“How messy?”
*sweats nervously*
Been using this plugin for my last few boards. Love it!
Deliberately exposing parts of circuits for aesthetics is something that's not done often. This is a good excuse for just that, excellent work!
I came across this vid by accident, but was thoroughly drawn in from the start. I took a lot of things apart in the 60's and 70's and I remember the fluid designs in old radios and walkie talkies of that era (and the peculiar odor of "Made In Japan" circuitry - "waxy" is as close as I can get to describing). Thanks for putting together a lovely and thought-provoking video. I'm just getting into circuit board design and taking a class on KiCad. I'll turn the instructor onto this vid!
I love it. And that animation at the end really blew my mind.
I'm in the process of redesigning a PCB w/ thicker traces because I screwed up the toner transfer 3 times in a row. I'll now have to try this plugin on the result!
I had never considered that the thing about historical limitations of CAD software may have contributed to metro/subway system maps looking the same way.
London underground set the standard and that was done in the days before software.
I've been rounding my designs since 2010 only because I liked the look. I personally think the efficient trace designs from Topo-R looks really cool. Thank you for the gracious contribution to the art via the KiCAD plugin.
The title is not a brief description of the video to entice you into watching it.
It is an instruction.
Melt your circuit boards.
I know almost nothing about PCBs beyond the basics... I didn't even know the name for "pads" apparently. But this was a very compelling look into a world I know nothing about that didn't make me feel like an idiot for not understanding everything. Your prose is as smooth as your traces.
I'll probably never need to build my own electronics, but this was a very interesting video about circuit boards and why the tracks on them are tge way they are.
Seriously impressive work mate!
I love how it looks, I'll definately try it out.
I was click baited into a pleasant informative video and in the end, it satisfied me with a visual and audible simulation of circuit boards melting, which gave me chills throughout my body. If there is such a channel that is dedicated to these simulations, I would love to subscribe as I did to this one.
To accentuate the "radiate on corners" point. The actual energy of a signal always is within the EM fields between a track and the ground plane.
Signals like people "travel through the halls [dielectric], not the walls [traces/ground plane]".
But remember at 2:30, that it's not about the frequency, but the edge rate of a signal that matters. (insert Eric Bogatin lecture here).
IMO: Corners have been the escape goat of bad EMC/EMI performance when folks forget that ground via stitching, having close ground planes to your signals, loop area (as you mentioned) and smart stackups / layer placement in those stackups affect things more.
Corners are a problem in electronics, but only when you work at high voltages and then you've got a risk of corona discharge.
Awesome video. The rt effects cracked me up at the end
I keep on forgetting I'm subscribed to your channel, so like 40% of the time I get a cool electronics video recommended to me it's from you!
Makes sense when you just start rounding off corners, sure. But in the exposition, on the macro scale of the circuit, I'd argue that you might be missing the point that straight lines are more trackable, and make debugging (read: not the designer, but, the person tasked with doing diagnostics) a million times easier. Try debugging some board with dozens of chips, dozens of resistors, and dozens of other components, running seemingly arbitrary path turns, versus squared off tracks.
I've never used any sort of cad software or done any electronics engineering, but I watched this entire video for some reason.
"ruthlessly effective" PCB looks incredibly cool. I'd say, it borrows from earlier, hand-drawn designs a bit, with it's weird placement of ICs and tracks, but there it's perfected to highest state.
You never disappoint. Going to download that ASAP
I recently made a python code (no clue how to make it a plugin) that deletes all pads that are on the same side as a THT component for the purpose of generating layouts for boards without plated through-holes. Also works for single-sided boards, not that it’s very necessary. It’s a good step towards getting a hassle-free home etch. Maybe I’ll try to make it into a plugin, assuming someone hasn’t beaten me to the punch. I’ve never really looked at existing plugins before, so it would be neat if you had any recommendations.
i have never heard of any of this in my life and have no idea what you are talking about but still watched the full video and was interested
This is genius. Love the result. Your maths level must be off the chart. Thanks for sharing with us lesser folk.
man this the kinda stuff that makes me want to be an engineer godspeed thank you for awesome kicad plugin
As someone who started PCB designing with Bishop Tape, it is nice to see this aesthetic again. when my Pi5 ever shows up I will be trying this on Kicad, thanks. Love the Brass stuff too. And those melting semiconductors at the end probably took some serious effort to create. Inspiring, will be trying Blender 4 on Pi5 too.
You are a national treasure, maybe even international
That look awesome, i hope they include this to the next iteration
11:50 Dali approves. Awesome visuals :D
4:13 I explain everything in TopoR, my colleagues laughed at first, but when I started giving out 3-4 simple PCBs a day, and a couple of complex ones, they changed their views on it.
I’ve never heard a man talk about curves with such passion
Cool! I'm planning to do some DIY stuff and planning a couple of PCBs. So now I can get them to look a bit retro. Bunch of thanks for your tips!
Im not an electrical engineer, however i did have a job building and repairing/modifying prototype pcbs. The thought of working on those "efficient" pcbs fills me with a fear i didnt know i had.
Wow These ideas you get with this stuff is awesome! Thanks for sharing
Fantastic animation, love the plugin, the animation toped it off.
Love your work mitxela! Thank you!
I'm glad you're on our side. If you had just one more tragic event happen in your childhood you'd be the ideal bond villain
Wow, amazing work and very informative, thanks for taking the time to contribute your skills and improving free tools!!
Excellent Video...Thank you for the visual treat at the end ! It must of took forever to make it !
The one thing to keep in mind with sharp corners in terms of high speed design is that the *clock* frequency doesn't matter, it's the rise/fall time that sets the signal bandwidth, so even with a circuit clocking at 100kHz you almost certainly have 200MHz+ bandwidth components if you're using modern CMOS, and probably much higher for faster MCUs like ESP32.
Bro, your videos have been recommended to me a lot lately, youtube algorithm is doing you good now. Nice work :)
The odds ill ever design a board are close too zero and yet this was very fun to watch
This is the best video I've seen since Retro Ahoy's History of graphics!
Dali would be thrilled! Love this.