Day 5

Today's Objective

Gerber/drill export, fab review, stencil, hand soldering, reflow basics

What You'll Cover Today

Day 5 of PCB Design in 5 Days brings everything together. You'll synthesize what you've built across the week into a complete, working implementation. This is the hardest day — and the most satisfying.

Gerbers

Understanding Gerbers is the core goal of Day 5. The concept is straightforward once you see it in practice — most confusion comes from skipping the mental model and jumping straight to implementation. Start with the model, then write the code.

# Gerbers — Working Example
# Study this pattern carefully before writing your own version

class GerbersExample:
    """
    Demonstrates core Gerbers concepts.
    Replace placeholder values with your real implementation.
    """
    
    def __init__(self, config: dict):
        self.config = config
        self._validate()
    
    def _validate(self):
        required = ['name', 'type']
        for field in required:
            if field not in self.config:
                raise ValueError(f"Missing required field: {field}")
    
    def process(self) -> dict:
        # Core logic goes here
        result = {
            'status': 'success',
            'topic': 'Gerbers',
            'data': self.config
        }
        return result

# Usage
example = GerbersExample({
    'name': 'my-implementation',
    'type': 'gerbers'
})
output = example.process()
print(output)

stencil

stencil is the practical application of Gerbers in real projects. Once you understand the underlying model, stencil becomes the natural next step.

soldering

soldering rounds out today's lesson. It connects Gerbers and stencil into a complete picture. You'll use all three concepts together in the exercise below.

Common Mistakes on Day 5

• Skipping the fundamentals — Gerbers requires understanding the underlying model before you can apply it correctly. Read the section twice if needed.
• Ignoring error messages — error messages for stencil are usually precise. Read them carefully before searching online.
• Hard-coding values — anything that might change between environments belongs in configuration, not in your source code.
• Not testing edge cases — the happy path is not enough. What happens with empty input? With unexpected types? With network failures?

1. Set up your environment for today's topic: install required tools and verify the basics work before writing any logic.
2. Implement a minimal working version of Gerbers using the code example in this lesson as your starting point.
3. Extend your implementation to incorporate stencil — this is where the two concepts connect.
4. Test your implementation with both valid and invalid inputs. What happens at the boundaries?
5. Review your code: is there anything you'd name differently? Any function doing more than one thing? Refactor one thing.

Extend today's exercise by adding one feature that wasn't in the instructions. Document what you built in a comment at the top of the file. This habit of going one step further is what separates engineers who grow fast from those who stay stuck.