I recently had the idea of printing a PCB design on a t-shirt. Since I don’t do my own silkscreening, I just wanted to upload my EAGLE PCB design to a custom t-shirt provider and have them do the hard part. In this post I’ll show you how you can do the same for your favorite board design. Mine turned out great!

Photo by Paul Sobczak

First, I exported my board design from EAGLE by choosing File -> Export, then picking Image from the next menu. You want your image to be high resolution, so increase the DPI value to at least 400 to give you a large image. Choose a file location for your large PNG file.

In Eagle, choose File -> Export, then choose Image

I then used Custom Ink to have the t-shirt made. I chose a black short sleeve Hanes Beefy-T. The shirt design tool makes it easy to upload an artwork image. After uploading, it asks you to choose the colors that are in the image. My standard Eagle board image has red, blue, white, green, and yellow. The colors you choose don’t have to exactly match your image — it’s just for accurate pricing.

Choose colors included in your image.

Then I resized the image so that it filled the front of the shirt. I also made sure to select the checkbox that says “keep the white in my image”.

Resize and position your PCB design

Next, get a quote and order a shirt. Mine only cost $24.75 and shipping was free in the U.S. I thought this was a great price and was really happy with the result!