New boards No.

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So I was excited to get the sample for the “final” version of the polarshield v1.5 through today, very nice… Except I noticed it only had traces on one side of the board!  No traces on the bottom!

Hm.

To have a board made, I produce a bunch of files, each one containing information about one layer of the board – silkscreen printing, soldermask, copper traces, cutting outline, drill holes etc – and zip them up (they’re also on github).   I raced to check the files I had sent, and – crestfallen – spotted that I’d somehow managed to miss the bottom copper files.

Infuriating! The wasted money stings a bit, but the main penalty is that production is knocked back another two weeks, and it’s already been too long.  I’m getting anxious, and making stupid mistakes like that really doesn’t help.

 

2 thoughts on “New boards No.”

  1. Sandy, sorry to read about the missing gerber file. FWIW, a good practice is to always include a README.TXT file in your ZIP archive which provides a table-of-contents for the supplied files. All the fabs I’ve worked with will look at that file and alert you if there’s then something missing from the ZIP archive. So, as long as you get the TOC right and then use it as your template, you then have an additional “safety” on mistakes.

    I’ve included a sample README.TXT file.

    Dan
    —–
    DACBRD README.TXT
    + Board dimensions 5.0″ x 2.2″ (X x Y)
    + 2 layer, 1 oz. copper, 0.062″ thick FR4 TG140
    + Silk screen component (top) side only; lettering width >= 5 mil
    + Solder mask both sides
    + 69 pads, 2 vias, 0 SMDs, 6 holes: 77 drills total
    + Smallest drill ~0.023″ (0.6mm)
    + Traces > 10mil; separations > 10 mil

    + All Gerber files are in Gerber RS274X format
    + NC Drill data is Excellon format with NO leading zero, NO trailing zero suppression

    Contact information:

    Dan Newman
    Sun Microsystems, Inc.
    …
    USA

    dan@sun.com

    (408) xxx-yyyy (office)
    (408) zzz-www (mobile)

    DACBRD.zip file contents:

    Component side copper: DACBRD.cmp
    Component side solder mask: DACBRD.stc
    Component side silk screen: DACBRD.plc

    Solder side copper: DACBRD.sol
    Solder side solder mask: DACBRD.sts
    Solder side silk screen: DACBRD.pls

    NC drill data: DACBRD.drd
    Route: DACBRD.gko

    Photoplotter info file: DACBRD.gpi
    Drill info file: DACBRD.dri
    Drill rack: DACBRD.drl

    — end of file —

    • Dan thanks, that makes a whole lot of sense, I should get into the habit of doing this. To be honest, I’m a bit surprised this is the first time I’ve made a mess of it like this.

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