Projects/PCB/PCB

There are a wide range of PCBs available, but they can be categorised by 5 bits of information.

Number of Layers
Boards can have up to 16 layers. Though for home manufactor you are limited to either 1 (single sided) or 2 (double sided).

Material
The material of the board tends not to affect its performance, but it's robustness. The material can range from compacted Card to carbon fibre, to flexible plastic. Generally paper or fibreglass boards are best, unless you specifically need a more expensive material.

Thickness
Standard boards are 1.6mm thick. They tend to vary based on material and number of layers however.

Weight of Copper
This sets the electrical characteristics of the board. Standard board is 35 um thick copper (1oz/sq foot). Thicker copper layers allow more current though the same traces and are only needed for high current applications.

Size
PCBs can vary in size dramatically. The fairly standard size is 100mm x 160mm. This is also the maximum size for the PCB press in the hackspace, as well as the standard size available from Maplins (around the corner from the hackspace). These can be cut down and/or milled quiet easily though to produce smaller boards.

Also not Eagle PCB is limited to 80mm x 100mm, or half a standard board. It can therefore be a good idea to double designs up.