Gerber Edit & Panelization

I do all mine in the pcb package( edit, select all, step and repeat paste) and then gerber the panel.

Hi, Tim:-

Altium does a decent job. You can rotate the boards etc. which comes in handy by times.

Sure seems to- hot linked to the PCB file(s) so you don't have to do anything if you make changes to the PCB except regenerate the Gerbers.

Nope.

For sure, nope.

I've used CAM350 in the past to look at Gerbers, do minor editing like getting silk screen off where it shouldn't be, and to find picky stuff, not to panelize. It seemed pretty user-friendly, similar to Gerbview which is the Altium barnacle for checking Gerbers.

They have a 30-day demo version and the full versions start at $500, which is pretty cheap for a postprocessor.

--sp

A CAD guy I work with once used Viewmate for that purpose. That particular version of Viewmate had a bug that caused two vias (out of hundreds) on that board to become shorted to an internal plane.

We were very lucky that the two shorted vias were in a location where they could be drilled out, saving the batch of boards.

We switched to CAM350 after that.

Regards, Allan

I got a program to penalize simple boards, but they are restricted to subset of gerbers. I.E, no fancy polygons. Can you send me the files to see if my program can do it?

Can I ask why you are panelizing the boards yourself rather than letting the PCB fab/assembly house worry about that? My experience is that they can do the job just fine and I can't think of any decisions I would be making about panelization that they would not be in a better position to consider themselves.

The only reason I see for DIY is that there is some special pick-n-place needs. Perhaps there are special rails needed or something. Sometimes the placement data is from 0,0 on one board in the panel, also.

One reason is that if you need to setup auto assembly, testing and stuffs, you have better control of how and where to place the boards.

Really? When I try to give the assembly house a pick and place file they don't want me to have it set for a panel. They want to control all of that themselves. I have given up fighting them on the panelization issue. I give them the design for one board and they do what they do best.

But I was hoping to hear from the OP why he wants to do his own panelization.

Do they stuff the boards individually or on the panel? All of the places we use (our production facility and both prototype CMs) stuff an entire panel at once and want the component locations referenced to one board's 0,0.

The above is why we do it but there are other reasons. Of course, we don't do the panelization in the dark, either. We ask the board house how best to use the panel ("we need something like 90x150mm, give us your preferred dimensions and panelization for the lowest cost" and design around that.

No personal experience with this one, but some people have had luck with it:

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I've found it worthless to try to panelize to save money in comparison to getting board houses to do it, but useful if you want to create a panel for volume manufacturing- of course you have to get the details like tooling strips and fiducials right enough, but it's good to get all that stuff under control so (for example) entire panels can be tested before depanelization.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Yes, the build a panel at once. But the PnP machine can handle that easily I am told. It would be pretty lame to pay $100k for a machine that couldn't handle that.

It is the PCB where they take a little more time to make sure they design a panel to support the final separation either tab route or V score. They have different offsets for each.

I don't follow. What is the reason you do you own panelization? What would the board house say if you asked them to handle it? Do you do your own board assembly or let the board house do it. Maybe that is the difference. I am doing turn-key work where I give them a design and they give me assembled boards.

That's not what they want from us.

But the fab house doesn't get to decide the manufacturing details. The certainly don't change it at will.

You just answered the post where I explained that. ...because the stuffing house has its preferences WRT how the data is sent to them. They want the offsets WRT one board. THe board house would do it but manufacturing wouldn't have any idea what do with them. We certainly don't have board fabs do parts stuffing. Two entirely different sorts of companies.

No, but the assembly house decides details with my approval since it impacts them.

Sorry, I just don't understand what you are saying. I got that you don't give the design to a company to make your boards. You have PCBs made and have a separate company assemble the boards. I don't know what you mean by "They want the offsets WRT one board." I think I see what is happening. Because you are doing the panelization the assembly house needs a file the covers the entire panel rather than having them use a file for a single PCB and let their pick and place machine work out the logic for the panel.

I give my design to an assembly house with specs for the PCBs and they deal with all the rest. I think they prefer this since they then work with a PCB fab house that they know and work well with. The assembly house wanted to go to ENIG for a finish because it made their life easier. They said it would be no extra cost to me so I said ok. I likely would not have gotten that sort of feedback if I had been handing them PCBs to stuff. Do you feel you save money this way? Do you buy your own parts?

Sometimes, though it goes the other way. We often (but not always) ask what they want to see but the primary concern is the product and the pick-n-place process.

Yes. That "separate company" is us (another plant, though) for production.

Yes.

It depends. I usually buy my own parts for prototypes. Certainly I can get better prices (mostly free) than the CM. An others in the group use a CM that buys parts while another uses our manufacturing line (also supplies parts). I haven't switched over to having the CM buy parts because I have a rather large inventory for most of the parts (already at the CM). I won't use our manufacturing line unless I'm forced to.

The CMs can do it either way (some prefer one way), rather that's the way our production line wants to run. They don't change anything on the design, even interpret component locations.

I think that explains a lot. My experience has been that with commercial assembly houses. They are very flexible with what you give them. Sounds like your internal assembly house is not so flexible.

There is another difference. I expect the CM can get better prices than I can. I'm a one man shop and when I used to buy my own parts it was a royal PITA. I thought I was saving money by micro managing the process, but now I think not.

One thing I did find the CM was not doing well was the PCB purchases. My minimum order size is 100 pieces. At that quantity they were paying the minimum lot charge. Next time they will buy the number of PCBs the lot charge pays for and we'll hold on to them for subsequent orders.

By design.

IME, CMs don't get better prices than I can, even from Digikey. They tend to buy what's needed for that run and can't see what's planned for next month (or six). I can buy a short (or even full) reel of parts. It's often cheaper but admittedly not enough to justify the hassle of parts handling. If I'm going to buy them, I'm going to do it once, though.

I do that for all (commonly available) parts for much the same reason. Other parts I get as samples so that saves considerable money (20 or

I don't think we have a minimum on raw boards. Of course the per-piece cost is higher for smaller runs. I see the costs (NRE, per piece, and turn options) for each job but I've never seen a minimum.

I'm not following. How would you see a minimum? The PCB fab house doesn't quote a minimum, they just quote a price. I was looking into a hard part from Xilinx once and asked for pricing at a few different quantities. After looking at the unit price trend I realized that they had a minimum lot charge and all the total prices were the same. That is how I found this PCB fab had a minimum lot charge when I asked about the PCB unit prices from my CM. It's not their money, they are just preparing a quote, so it didn't occur to them to check to see if there was a minimum lot charge, but that is what it came out to be. This is a pretty small board and I think the lot charge gets just over 200 boards. I'll find out the next time my customer orders more.

About the parts pricing. My CM is willing to bulk buy the common parts and get better pricing that way. They charge me for what I use and keep the rest in their inventory. They have even given me a few for prototype/repair work and I have reciprocated by letting them "borrow" from my inventory. I think that works out great.

Fixed price for up to N boards.

I'll look into it further, too. There is an NRE charge that's separate from the per-piece charge but it's small (for the flying probe test setup, I think).

I tend to specify exact parts so unless they happen to use that part, they won't have it in their inventory. They'll buy a cut tape, where I generally buy at least a short ("Digi" or "Mouse") reel with at least twice as many parts as I'm using for that batch.

On Tue, 08 Jul 2014 15:41:52 -0400, rickman Gave us:

As long as you are not getting three year old parts placed on your assys.

SMD parts have expiry dates and it is all related to solderability issues and government contract requirements for reliability guarantees.

We destroy several thousand $ worth of parts every month.

I wish I was able to get them, because I could start a one man schlock house with premium parts and make $1M+ a year easily.

The guy that does get our scrap has to guarantee destruction of some of the items.