A streamlit based web app for generating serpentine patterned PCB traces for heating purposes.
- Easy to run and play around with
- Prepared to support materials other than copper
- Prepared to support footprint file formats other than KiCAD.
Set the voltage and maximum current you work with as well as the temperature rise you aim for in the General section of the sidebar. The PCB settings should work with the default settings of most manufacturers (copper traces @ 1 oz/ft², 0.2 mm clearance) and will result in a PCB height of 100 mm (the width is created dynamically according to your input). If you aim for specific dimensions set the CPB height in the PCB Settings section of the sidebar and modify the settings until the width matches your needs.
Take a look at the PCB Settings section of the sidebar. There you'll find more advanced options like trace clearance, trace spacing, material choice and material thickness. These settings (especially the trace spacing) might help with achieving the dimensions you are looking for.
The output will be a serpentine patterned trace to place on your PCB. In the main body of the site you'll find the calculated properties of you result. If there are smaller annotations below it shows you the absolute minimum/maximum settings (e.g. with 12V @ 10A your minimum resistance MUST be 1.2Ω to prevent your PSU from damage, so the trace is generated to be this value or higher).
You can download your KiCAD-Footprint by clicking the Download KiCAD Footprint button.
To run the app, clone the repository using git
git clone https://github.com/bliepp/PCB-Heater-Generator.gitand install the dependencies via pip (a virtual environment is recommended)
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txtNow run the app with the streamlit CLI command
streamlit run main.pyand open http://localhost:8501/ in the webbrowser of your choice.
The default port is 8501. To change the port, please see the streamlit help message
streamlit run --help