I Made a PCB Business Card with NFC. Go Ahead, Reuse My Files!

salvagedcircuitry · November 22, 2019

Mods: if there is a better place to put this, go ahead and move it on over. Thanks!

Hey guys,

I think this is something folks here would appreciate. Check out my latest PCB business card. It's made out of 0.8mm FR4, the same prepreg PCB material that most motherboards are made of, but this is only 2 layers. I can imagine most motherboards today are closer to 16 layers.
I remember back in the days when Socket 7 motherboards were only a few layers thick and you could see through them in spots when held up to the light. That silly light diffusion and de-lidding of pentium one's got me into Electrical Engineering, so I felt a proper homage to that was in order.

This business card has NFC capabilities and features the most common integrated circuit footprints found on circuit boards today. Three rulers of different measure are also included: 1/32in ruler, 1/5mm ruler, 1/10th ruler. A trace width and pin patch gauge are also included, along with the different resistor and diode package sizes. The good news, is it only cost me $0.66 each for 150 of em. That's not terrible considering paper business cards are $0.04-0.06 in quantities of 500. These are Electroless Nickel-Gold plated though. Can't beat that!

Here's a few shots:

Business cards in action:

Circuit:

Layer stackup:

All that is needed is the one tiny black chip to make the NFC coil in business cards work. The other components are because the LED was not bright enough to shine through card

This card was designed in Kicad 5.0. Kicad is free pcb design software that is quite good. I used to use eagle cad to design small pcbs but Kicad now fills that need.
The PCB design files are free to modify for personal use and fall under a creative commons license.

PCB files to make your own are available here:
https://github.com/anthonykouttron/pcb-business-card-qr-nfc

For a complete detailed writeup check this out:
https://salvagedcircuitry.com/pcb-business-card

Towards completing this project, I thought, man I should make a "CPU Sockets Over the years" business card :D. I would need a Rolodex for that now though...
Someone please beat me to making this

I'd love feedback from you guys. Let me know what you think!