I had to build a 1 watt Class AB – Amplifier for an Electronics devices course.   The school has an LPKF PCB prototyping machine to make these PCBs with.   I’m not going to turn down the chance to have the boards made up so any project that involves PCB layout, I will over do it! The machine does 2 sided boards and with a special baking process plates the holes.  I only learned this after I spent all the time making it single sided with a ground plane on top.  So many lessons learned on this one.

After two revisions and some trace cutting, she’s alive.  I used some Phoenix connectors on the board for connection.  I will never make a board without some simple way to connect or disconnect it. Also, the idea of a PCB copper heat-sink was a bad idea.  I imagine the copper has to be thin for the machine to router… so chunks of aluminium were added on the back.  Thing gets rather hot.