Olimex alternative for PCB manufacturing

Thank you for the link! That's quite a bit to take in, actually. For one thing, I never realized the groove is done on both sides of the board, so my guess is that it needs to be defined twice then. I guess, I'm going to have to heed his advice: "The PCB designer should collaborate with the PCB fabrication shop..." Yeah, it does not seem like an "upload and get it accepted in 2 minutes" type of an option...

Cheers!

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very few boards, that isn't just cut out to a shape, but needs to panelized in some way to make pcb house and manufacturing happy, are ..

-Lasse

Actually, I think that's kind of a CYA statement by Mentor-- you should be able to do just that if it's just an outline of a rectangular board. PCB makers do a fair bit of manipulation of the files.

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RU google translate?

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Maybe my fingers and my brain aren't always fully connected, but I don't think I've gotten a Google implant just yet :P

-Lasse

There pricing used to be quite competitive with the other Chinese fab houses that will handle small volume orders and protos, but recently they jacked up their area rate (price per sq in) and it is now about four times one of their competitors. As many of my jobs are quite cost-sensitive (whose aren't?) I've reluctantly move away from them.

You get to select the factory turnaround time on the job entry form. Obviously faster is more expensive. The knee of the curve is the ten-day. And they have ALWAYS delivered on the promised day.

Quality is top-notch. And not only do they answer your questions, if they have any they will ask you. I haven't had any v-grooves from them, only fully routed out, but I can't see why double-sided v-grooving would require more than the normal mech layer board outline.

Talk to them.

I often send (non-SM) proto panels to a particular board house whose price structure for HASL-only finish is competitive. (They aggregate and outsource, I'm sure). The last one incorporated quantities from

That panel returned with no sign of my copper outlines - and no sign they were ever placed - and routed with the minutest breakout tabs I have ever seen. If I had known that was what they were going to do I would have approached the panelising differently, but I'll bet that it wouldn't happen that way a second time.

I just draw lines on the drill plot where I want the grooves, they sort it out. It only got tricky when I was doing manual "breaking" of the boards.

"I want the groove deep enough so I can break them easily without stressing the parts, but not so deep they all fall apart during pick and place"...

Sign up. It's free. They don't spam.

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They could embedd tiny strips of cordite on inner layers.

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Or just use a chain saw to separate them.

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How about grooves with pcb traces under them. Run enough current to soften up the epoxy.

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Traces on every layer with a *lot* of vias between them?

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One skinny trace on one layer, inner or bottom side, should do it.

Or use a picosecond laser to slice things up. Lots of people, probably too many people, are making fast lasers for materials processing nowadays. Somebody has a 500 watt CW vicsel! That's a weapon.

For small lots, there's the Dremel circular saws, good for finishing off the almost-routed boards like I posted. A small Dremel-based table router would work, too.