So armed with my successful electronic test of my prototype highside switch with driving circuit all passing, I determined now it is sufficiently validated to go through the process of converting it into a printable schematic and doing the whole DIY flat flex PCB making and acid etching process to streamline the development of the rest of the motor controller and most likely many more motor controllers as well.



I opted to use photoshop as my circuit making software of choice as I'm very familiar with it and use it often. I first dropped my top view photo of my prototype circuit into photoshop then I redid its layout a bit to make it more compact, moving around copied pieces on the photo to achieve this. Next, I used the pencil tool to color in blue pads and traces connecting all the pieces of it together. I then hid all but this pads and traces layer and printed it several times, tweaking the printing scale until it fit the size of the pieces IRL. 7.5% scale was the perfect fit.











Next, I will need to refresh my knowledge of the transfer paper print and transfer of the ink off of this paper onto the copper clad blank flat flex PCB and then acid etching away all unwanted copper and then removing the ink to reveal the fresh copper traces and pads. Then I can solder all the SMD components onto this. Heck I may even make a solder paste stencil and place components and bake them on. But perhaps just hand solder for now? Not sure. The former is faster in the long run but takes more setup and is quite committing. I'd rather validate my designs even further before going that far.