Printing Multiple Images

Open a new - empty - brd, save it & then go to the first brd, switch all

layers on. Then: Group, Cut, open the new brd & paste. Do this process with

all other brd. Back-forward-annotation is not active.

But be careful: remember the restrictions for your version of eagle

(80x100mm for the freeware).

r

I cut out small part of the laser plastic film, then glue each one to a

normal white paper(the same every time) and run it in my laser. After

that i glue 3 pcs. plastic together for both top an bottom side(totally

6 pcs.). It take some time, and you must me very accurate when glue all

the pcs. together.

I use a old cheap uv "facial sun" and put my uv pcb in middel of too

pcs. glass. Light time in my case about 20 sec.

I have made real complex double side smd prototyping that way.

Hope it can help a little.

On 18-02-2010 10:42, Ing. J.M. Rafetseder wrote:

Open a new - empty - brd, save it & then go to the first brd, switch

all layers on. Then: Group, Cut, open the new brd & paste. Do this

process with all other brd. Back-forward-annotation is not active.

But be careful: remember the restrictions for your version of eagle

(80x100mm for the freeware).

r

 

 

Hi Guys

Thanks for the feedback.

To J.M. Rafetseder:- I have tried your suggestion and it works fine.  I

found that I can also "group" and paste in the same board i.e. when I come

to print the board layout I can also duplicate the board to fill the film.

My boards are only small (60mm x 40mm) and are related to a model railway

so I can fit several differant boards on one film.

To Flemming :-  Am I correct in saying that the white paper acts as backing

for the film pieces when they go through the printer? I am not sure how you

get the layouts onto the film.

Gareth

--

Browser access to CadSoft Support Forums at http://www.eaglecentral.ca

Yes the white paper is only transport for the small plastic film.

On 18-02-2010 13:26, Gareth wrote:

Hi Guys

 

Thanks for the feedback.

 

To J.M. Rafetseder:- I have tried your suggestion and it works fine. I

found that I can also "group" and paste in the same board i.e. when I come

to print the board layout I can also duplicate the board to fill the

film. My boards are only small (60mm x 40mm) and are related to a model

railway

so I can fit several differant boards on one film.

 

To Flemming :- Am I correct in saying that the white paper acts as backing

for the film pieces when they go through the printer? I am not sure how you

get the layouts onto the film.

 

Gareth

Gareth wrote:

Good day

 

I am still very much a beginner to Eagle but have managed to produce a

number of small board designs that I want to now use to etch the boards.  I

want to print the layouts onto clear film (HP Laser Jet 4L) and then etch

onto photosensitive boards.

 

Is there any way that I can print multiple images onto the film without

having to put the one film through the printer multiple times (which

doesn't work on my old HP 4L)? At the moment all I can do is to print one

image on one film which is wasteful and expensive.

 

Yet another option might be to export to another format such as PNG,

load it into a simple graphics program (MS-Paint?), do as many copies in

there until the sheet size is full, then save that file and print from

that program.

--

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.

Use another domain or send PM.

Hi!

Am Donnerstag, den 18.02.2010, 10:38 +0200 schrieb Gareth:

Is there any way that I can print multiple images onto the film without

having to put the one film through the printer multiple times (which

doesn't work on my old HP 4L)? At the moment all I can do is to print one

image on one film which is wasteful and expensive.

I use the CAM processor to export to EPS files (which is a vector

graphics format) and then write a small LaTeX file which has multiple

\includegraphics[scale=1.0] to put multiple files on one

sheet. This way I can add descriptive text, side lables, drill diameter

legend, title, my phone number, ... on the sheet before I bring it to

the guy who etches them for me.

Alternatively you could use OpenOffice.org and insert the EPS files

(which is extremely slow because it uses GhostScript in the background

to display the EPS files, and does some senseless stuff). But be

careful, the most important part is that the scale has to be exactly

1.0, otherwise your PCB is scaled and no components will fit its

footprints.

Note that with Eagle 5.7 you have to set the paper size of the EPS file

in the CAM processor to 100x100 inch, then the exported file has its

bounding box exactly the size of the used area.

I discourage you from using PNG (or any other pixel graphics format like

GIF, BMP or even JPG) because this has a discrete resolution and will

introduce "stair" effects for non-ortogonal lines. Increasing its

resolution to some idiotically high value will not improve your case,

because the printer will print gray shaded pixels which have

unpredictable results with the photo resist. So, please stay in pure

vector graphics all the time and let the rastering do the printer

itself.

Bye

  Hansi

Johann Glaser wrote:

Hi!

 

Am Donnerstag, den 18.02.2010, 10:38 +0200 schrieb Gareth:

Is there any way that I can print multiple images onto the film without

having to put the one film through the printer multiple times (which

doesn't work on my old HP 4L)? At the moment all I can do is to print one

image on one film which is wasteful and expensive.

 

I use the CAM processor to export to EPS files (which is a vector

graphics format) and then write a small LaTeX file which has multiple

\includegraphics[scale=1.0] to put multiple files on one

sheet. This way I can add descriptive text, side lables, drill diameter

legend, title, my phone number, ... on the sheet before I bring it to

the guy who etches them for me.

 

Alternatively you could use OpenOffice.org and insert the EPS files

(which is extremely slow because it uses GhostScript in the background

to display the EPS files, and does some senseless stuff). But be

careful, the most important part is that the scale has to be exactly

1.0, otherwise your PCB is scaled and no components will fit its

footprints.

 

Note that with Eagle 5.7 you have to set the paper size of the EPS file

in the CAM processor to 100x100 inch, then the exported file has its

bounding box exactly the size of the used area.

 

I discourage you from using PNG (or any other pixel graphics format like

GIF, BMP or even JPG) because this has a discrete resolution and will

introduce "stair" effects for non-ortogonal lines. Increasing its

resolution to some idiotically high value will not improve your case,

because the printer will print gray shaded pixels which have

unpredictable results with the photo resist. So, please stay in pure

vector graphics all the time and let the rastering do the printer

itself.

 

True. But in reality anything beyond 600dpi or on most older printers

like Gareth's 300dpi will get smushed by the printer anyhow.

I really liked HPGL but nowadays most programs no longer support that

and plug-ins for HPGL don't always work right

--

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Hi and again thanks for the relplies.

I have "Grouped,cut and pasted" and it seems to have worked OK.  I did try

previously to copy and paste into OOO draw but I was disapointed with the

results, as has been pointed out my old HP 4L is does not give me high

quality, so hence the request for help.

I haven't tried copying the EPS files into OOO yet but will try it later.

Again thanks to everyone for the help.

Gareth

--

Browser access to CadSoft Support Forums at http://www.eaglecentral.ca

Gareth wrote:

Hi and again thanks for the relplies.

 

I have "Grouped,cut and pasted" and it seems to have worked OK.  I did try

previously to copy and paste into OOO draw but I was disapointed with the

results, as has been pointed out my old HP 4L is does not give me high

quality, so hence the request for help.

 

Gareth, you might want to play around with the settings for that

printer. For example some of the RET settings might not be so suitable

for this job. Printer memory size may be another issue. I upped my old

5L to 5MB, thanks to a friendly participant in a European NG.

I haven't tried copying the EPS files into OOO yet but will try it later.

Again thanks to everyone for the help.

 

So far my attempts of importing EPS into OpenOffice were not all that

successful.

--

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.

Use another domain or send PM.

On Fri, 19 Feb 2010, Gareth wrote to us saying :

Hi and again thanks for the relplies.

 

I have "Grouped,cut and pasted" and it seems to have worked OK.  I did try

previously to copy and paste into OOO draw but I was disapointed with the

results, as has been pointed out my old HP 4L is does not give me high

quality, so hence the request for help.

 

I've done this sort of thing, again with an HP4, by printing to a bunch

of files and merging them with some postscript manipulators. Actually I

hacked up a bit of Python to combine them. This gives good enough

results because it doesn't munge the data so the scaling remains intact,

but my hacked-up script isn't totally PS-compliant and breaks with

output from the wrong programs (possibly even Eagle 5, as I wrote them

for 4.15).

Coincidentally that was also for model railway stuff

(http://lintrain.sourceforge.net)

--

Rob Pearce                       http://www.bdt-home.demon.co.uk

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