software for pcb panel step and repeat

Your supplier should be able to do this.You package should be able to do it as well.....

Look at this:

Might do what you want. I have not tried it, I found the link in a message from the Classic Computer mailing list.

are to layout the step and repeat for panels,

it

And you should be able to do it too. We do our own panelizations and positionings for part assembly. Gerber data are easy to parse and regenerate.

We get too many problems leaving the panel layout to vendors. Panels that sag during flow soldering, tabs that damage tracks near the edge of the board and so on.

Our pcb package does not allow us to layout the panel.

Thanks. Doesn't look promising.

"Other CAD programs will NOT WORK with a very high probability, as the input parser is quite primitive. "

Of course it will, you just have to do it manually, cut'n'paste style. Needs some care, but not hard. Every package allows that. Screws up your DRC, but you normally do this on a sperate panel file anyway. What package are you using?

Dave.

CAM350 appears to allow panelization for manufacturing.

But, the PCB mfg usually does all that stuff to minimize waste.

Cheers

it

Sound like problems with your board fab and/or communications with them. You should be able to specify scoring and/or tabing size and pos.

Use a second package to panelize. For example. CAM350 as someone else said so.

I'll look at CAM350.

I don't like leaving the pcb manufacturer to specify stuff, it usually causes problems.

For example I used to instruct "UL mark pcbs including date code". So some boards came in marked 0708 and some 0807, no clue as to whether it was mmyy or yymm. On checking I found they did it differently on different production lines. It wasn't something we spotted and was picked up when our customer had a UL inspection. Not to mention UL logos on pcbs - a nightmare. I now check the UL registration of all pcb suppliers.

More to the point I specify a max panel size that works for us based on pick and place bed size, flow soldering nozzle width etc. We have had panels from a UK company arrive in with a random width edge on the panels, anywhere between 10mm and 30mm. This is way outside the ability of the pick and place to find the fiducials.

You should check ALL UL registrations, at least for new suppliers.. it's easy to do it online. Recently had an issue where the stuff was approved but they had fallend behind in protection money to UL so we held up the order until they forked over the money.

Ewww. random. Might be worth asking for a GIF of the panelized Gerbers?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

SNIP

Random because they were using a guillotene to cut the panels down after manufacture. If I remember correctly our panel was 3 x 2 boards and they were making a panel 6 x 8 boards. This is the sort of thing you don't expect until it happens.

Another issue is that we use manual solder stencil machines and even small adjustments between panels wastes time.

Then you should be looking for another supplier. Our pcb house allows us to specify number of boards in X and Y directions, as well as spacings between them.

We buy 80% of our boards direct from a Chinese factory now even for fairly low quantities. The quality is significantly better than from the low cost end of the UK market.

The reason for starting this thread was to find a program that let us set up the X and Y and tabs etc ourselves. Then I have the information as part of the manufacturing file for that product. That lets me swap suppliers without having to respecify this information and getting tabs moved by 5mm etc

ly

=A0So

ave

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By request, our supplier provides us the panelizied gerber files. We can make them in another factory, but can't do it any cheaper anyway.