If you have ordered PCBs with cutouts inside your board, what was your process to do so?
What board manufacturer did you use?
Did you need to inform the factory ahead of time about the cutout?
For simple slots have you ever used closely spaced holes of appropriate size?
larryd:
If you have ordered PCBs with cutouts inside your board, what was your process to do so?What board manufacturer did you use?
Did you need to inform the factory ahead of time about the cutout?
For simple slots have you ever used closely spaced holes of appropriate size?
We have on the rare occasion had to do something like that to customer boards. I use the resharpened carbide drill bits and burrs used for fr4 circuit boards. I guess they are still available on Ebay. They have 1/8 inch shafts.
I have a Dumore drill press that will turn 0 to 10,000 rpm or 0-30,000 rpm. I use the burr or drill bit in the Dumore and put the circuit board on a sacrificial piece of board and start cutting.
Paul
This issue crops up when you need a board footprint for something like a 5.5mm/2.5mm power socket. The connector requires through hole plated slots in the PCB.
I sent a PCB off to one of the standard suppliers, $10 for 10 off 10cm x 10cm PCBs, and it came back slotted, I had not realised the connector footprint on the PCB had slots on the milling layer (it was not one on my designs).
Just recently I had a PCB done, with a different supplier, using the same PCB footprint. So I assumed it would come back slotted. It did not.
Thanks Paul.
I have done similar.
Was wandering what’s done in the PCB design software to get the board house to get them to do this for you.
I guess it’s important to know the routing bit diameter size to keep traces far away from the cutout opening.
I would guess that you would either put it on the drill file or outline??? Not sure but this makes sense to me...
I use OSH Park. They are fine with any oddly-shaped cutouts anywhere on the board. There are some restrictions that are clearly documented on their website.
I just draw the cutouts on the outline layer with zero-width lines.
The one thing they won't do is plated slots, such as are required for the barrel connector on the UNO.
wolframore:
I would guess that you would either put it on the drill file or outline??? Not sure but this makes sense to me...
As mentioned in post #2 they seem to accept the cuttouts in the milling layer (for Eagle).
Which equates to the .GML layer in Gerber.
I’ll have to give OSH Park a try.
While they tend to be more expensive (OSH Park).. their boards are great quality! (and look good too!)
Faster shipping that China of course.. (but you do pay more)
i have had great luck using easyeda pcb design software, and then ordering the pcbs off of JLC pcb.
i do it like this:
I use the edge layer in KiCAD for e.g. slots between mains and low voltage parts. Always came back right from Seeed and JLC without any additional interaction. It also displays correctly in their Gerber viewer.