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How does one add drill slots to PCB in Eagle?

Former Member

Note: I am not talking about drilling holes for screws.

 

Assuming that one wants to have slots drilled into the PCB perhaps with:

1) rounded ends
2) square ends
3) arbitrary shape (perhaps for art work)

or

4) create a PCB that is not rectangular, perhaps round or some arbitrary shape.

How does one do so in Eagle? Is it possible that the PCB manufacturer not support drilling in that specific way?

  • On 04.07.2016 09:56, curiousengineer wrote:

    Note: I am not talking about drilling holes for screws.

     

    Assuming that one wants to have slots drilled into the PCB perhaps with:

    1) rounded ends

     

    The manufacturer will use a milling tool of certain diameter. There is a

    milling layer used for internal cuts, but you could also draw shapes in

    the dimension layer. You need to imagine a mill tool doing it, so 90deg

    sharp corners may not be manufacturable. Maybe they will even just use

    the smallest dia mill tool and not care about the sharp corners.

     

    Note, if you need special plated holes, eagle has no direct way of

    telling the manufacturer to do that, but in general if there is copper

    at the cut edge, it gives a clue that you want it plated.

     

    2) square ends

     

    This will probably need special tooling. If you really need it, consult

    your manufacturer before doing it. Maybe a few mm dia corner is sufficient?

     

    3) arbitrary shape (perhaps for art work)

     

    See 1)

     

    or

    4) create a PCB that is not rectangular, perhaps round or some arbitrary shape.

     

    The dimension layer is used to make a general pcb shape. The

    manufacturer has different ways of doing this, cause they need the pcb

    to be made of a standard rectangular blanks. In general, they want to

    mill your board edge out, but if you need a factory to pick&place the

    components, they may most likely want your pcb in a frame that fits

    their machines. The most used ways to do this is to leave perforated

    segments in the outer milling track so you can break off the board from

    the frame after pick and place is done and your board has passed tests.

    There are also v-cuts that can be done as an alternative.

     

    How does one do so in Eagle? Is it possible that the PCB manufacturer not support drilling in that specific way?

     

    Yes, any properties your selected factory cant handle in an easy way,

    will add cost. Normally they list the features they can do at standard

    prices, such as milling diameters, min via sizes and other features.

     

    At the end, passing your layout files to a manufacturer is for the

    professionals, but you can be pretty confident on boards with no special

    features. A customer caring manufacturer will get back to you with

    issues they find and warn about issues. But there is no guarantee they

    will find all the issues until its too late.