Creating Logos for PSLab with KiCAD

We can make plenty of PCB designs using KiCAD, a powerful open source CAD tool. What makes them unique is customized logos and brand names. KiCAD offers us a feature to add logos in any of the silk screens; bottom or top. Rather than just a textual logos, a graphical logo makes the design look more unique just like the PSLab v5 revision.

The process is not a tedious task. We can simply start by getting the logo we want to add in the PCB silk screen. Just to make it more clear, silk screen is a paint made on top of the circuit board with all the markings and labels with a special ink. It will be either white or black according to user preference. As the first step, open the logo image file with inkscape.

We need to pre-process the image before we move onto KiCAD development space. The silk screen will have a black and white image as the input. It will convert all the black parts to invisible and white parts visible in the silk screen color. In that sense we have to color transform any logo into following format to get the desired output.

Once the logo image is ready, open KiCAD and from it’s toolbar;

Click and open “Bitmap2Component” icon which is similar to a “simple a”. This will open a window where you can import the logo image in png format.

In this figure, image height and width is massive. It is always a good practice to have a large image and then scale it down to prevent any detail losses. If the image is too big, from the “Resolution” section, try increasing the DPI value and observe the dimensions are shrinking. You can have a ruler and measure the actual size of the image you want and then adjust the DPI values to get the desired dimensions. In my case I had to use 2500×3000 DPI to get an image of 20mmx7mm,

The next step is to export the logo file. Click on the “Export” button and select the location to your custom component library and save the file in “kicad_mod” format.

Now open up “Pcbnew” layout where the PCB design is. From the toolbar to your right, click on the “Add footprint” icon.

A dialog box will pop up to select the component. Click on the button “Select by Browser” to get a more interactive selection menu or you can simply type the name if you remember it correctly.

From the component browser, browse to the library where you saved the kicad_mod file and import it to the layout. The final result will look like this. If the dimensions are not what you wanted, simply follow the previous steps again to increase the DPI values to get the correct dimensions. By pressing “f” you can flip the silk screen side, bottom or top to place the logo where ever you want.

Reference:

KiCAD Documentation: http://kicad-pcb.org/help/documentation/

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