Re: DFX to Gerber?

Den wrote:
"cavelamb himself" <cavelamb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:jaudnY4xAY9UYXHVnZ2dnUVZ_rfinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Den wrote:

Here is a pic of the board.
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb/proof.htm#cpu
It's not real big, but way too much to hand drill at home!

--

Richard

(remove the X to email)



You can drill that by hand no problems, probably take 15 to 20 minutes. Get some HSS 3mm shank pcb drill bits and whack them in the drill press on max rpm. I find they blunt very quickly using FR4 fibreglass board as the drill speed is not high enough. If you can get it try using phenolic board, its cheaper and drills way easier. I've found the carbide drillbits a too brittle for hand use in a drill press, they do cut superbly though.

To line up the two sides print to overhead film on a laser and lay them back to back, line up the pad holes and run some tape down the side of the two overhead films. Have the taped bit an inch or two from the edge of the pcb to minimise the error due to the thickness of the pcb that will be placed between them. Expose one side, then the other. It takes a littke care but I'm pretty rough and have not had too many problems. Increase pad and track sizes as much as practical - makes it more robust for homeshop manufacturing.

For outsourcing it maybe look at www.pcbcart.com I found them inexpensive, quick & good quality. For a Chinese company their email communications were fast and intelligible.

You are a braver soul than I, Dan.
I wouldn't even consider that short of end of the world conditions!

The mechanical aspects aside, the next step after drilling is replating
with another 2 ounces of copper. Or hand solder both sides of every via?
Pass!

The tracks on this one are pretty much maxed out at .013.
Making them .015 eats up the clearance between pads right quick.




Yeah, I sometimes make the tracks as wide as possible & neck them down between the pads. I'm not sure hpw much of this you've done, but IC sockets are cheap, especially for one offs or low volume stuff. They make it easy to solder both sides if needed (pseudo vias) and also for fault finding/debugging. Maybe instead of replating just tin or hand tin with solder the tracks that need to be heavier or alternately use heavier weight copper cladding to begin with. Have fun!


<<snipped>>



Signals tracks this short seldom need extra metal, but power and
especially ground sometimes do.

What we did back in the good old days was simply remove the solder
resist from a ground trace and solder on a piece of wire.


--

Richard

(remove the X to email)
.

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