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I assembled for my grade 12 Computer Engineering final project. The goal was to fabricate any circuit that used a 555 timer IC chip. I liked the way LED cubes looked and perhaps the challenge of it too, so I went with arguably the most complex one. Making homemade/DIY PCBs had its pros and cons.
Pros: quite a bit of learning from it, more hands-on, pretty affordable
Cons: copper clad boards could burn easily, takes time and some tools
As previously mentioned, the copper clad boards burn pretty easily, so that combined with the thin layer of copper which would oxidize kind of easily caused a lot of the copper to come off. Hence, the less than hobbyist and far from professional soldering seen in the later photos. I recommend using a 45W soldering iron since 60W (the one I used) was likely too hot at times. Another problem I encountered was that the diagram I’d followed didn’t ground the circuit completely so it ended up not working once it’d been all soldered. The 555 chips used when the pin 11 of the 4020 wasn’t grounded all got fried and became unusable. But rest assured, this one works well even after three years of it being made.”

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