Hello everyone, I'm new to Eagle Cad and was wondering if anyone could give me a tip on widening the etched route lines when I go to make a PCB layout. I'm not referring to the actual traces but the lines that my CNC machine would etch out the copper during milling. Problem is that the smallest endmill I have is a 1mm and when I go to process the G-Code, it fails because the etch lines are smaller than my endmill. Any help would be very much appreciated! Thanks!
Hello Nick Knack,
It looks like you'll need to change the distance settings for when the copper pour/flood is generated.
In the PCB editor you can go to Edit->Design Rules; select the 'Distance' tab in the window which opens.
Now if you set the value Copper/Dimension to 1mm and then 'OK', next re-pour your polygon and you should find 1mm gap has been generated.
HTH.
<edit> From the built in help:-
"Isolate
Distance between polygon areas and other signals or objects in the Dimension layer (default: 0). If a particular polygon is given an Isolate value that exceeds that from the design rules and net classes, the larger value will be taken. See also Design Rules under Distance and Supply, respectively. Note that if you give a polygon an Isolate value that exceeds that from the design rules and net classes, small gaps may result between the calculated polygon and objects belonging to the same signal as the polygon itself, which may lead to problems during manufacturing! It is therefore recommended to leave this parameter at 0, unless you know exactly what you are doing!"
</edit>
Hi guys,
Thanks for the replies. I went through and tried what you advised but all it does is thicken the trace and not the etched lines (the lines that show up black) -- which would be the lines that are milled by the CNC endmill (see image).
That is weird. I made a few screenshots.
I made this simple board with some normal .016 inch traces. The dotted line is the plygon for the copper-pour (ground pour).
I then hit the ratsnest icon to get the plygon filled using standard .016 inch isolation :
I then selected the polygon (either right-click -> properties or using the 'i' icon) and changed the isolate to 0.032 :
As you can see this should do what you need (unless the blue plane in your board is not done using a polygon with copper-pour, but it looks like it is).
Of course, the distance between normal traces (not between a trace and a copper-pour/plane) is controlled by you if you route manually, or by the clearance parameter in the DRC settings when using the autorouter as Mogens indicated.
Hope this helps,
Guido
