1. Design
Work In Progress – @Dmitry Nourell
Getting started
We share the pretty same workflow as any other PCB fabrication house – you export Gerbers (.gbr), Excellon (.drl) files, and voilà!
Specifications
Parameter | Capability |
|---|---|
Layers | F.Cu – Signal, B.Cu – Ground Plane |
Track Width | 0.3mm |
Track Spacing | 0.1mm |
Silkscreen | No |
Mask | No |
Drilling Hole Diameter | 0.6mm |
Drilling Hole Offset Tolerance | ±0.15mm |
Milling | No |
Board setup
This guide is about KiCad, but your CAD of choice must also have pretty much all of these features.
PCB Boundary
Make sure that you defined PCB boundary on Edge.Cuts layer.
Drill & Grid Origins
Set Drill (1) and Grid (2) Origins to the same point in PCB designer if not yet. Usually, it’s a left-bottom outer corner of the PCB.
Copper fill
Major downside of this process is that time increase linearly with the amount of copper the machine had to remove. Add a ground copper fill on F.Cu unless you have a compelling reasons of not doing so.
Draw a copper zone across the entire PCB boundary, connect it to GND net, adjust islands removal.
Vias and Jumpers
While we don’t support fully-fledged two-layer fabrication, you still can use it for jumpers with Vias. Trick is to either:
Cut traces on Bg.Cu manually, using PTHs as landmarks.
Solder jumper wires between those vias.
Example of jumper trace on Bg.Cu which I've cut manually after engraving
Exporting fabrication files
You need to export Gerbers (1) and Drill Files (2) before moving forward to FlatCAM.
Go to "File" → "Fabrication Outputs"
Gerbers
Gerber files defines how different layers looks like. For our process you need only Edge.Cuts and
On Gerber Plot dialog make sure to:
Check F.Cu layer.
Check Edge.Cuts layer.
Check “Use drill/place” file origin.
Uncheck other layers.
Click “Plot” and you’re done.
Drill
On “Drill Files” dialog:
Select “Excellon” as Drill File Format.
Select “Drill/place file origin” as Drill Origin.
Click on “Generate Drill File”.
Summary
You now should have four additional files in your project’s directory:
Gerber for Edge.Cuts layer (PCB boundaries).
Gerber for F.Cu layer (front copper layer).
Excellon (drill) for NPTH (Non Plating Through Hole).
Excellon for PTH (Plated Through Hole).