I have a few questions concerning a small PCB design that I want manufactured.
(1) Is it possible to specify tapered holes? I need this for countersunk screws. (If needed I can do it myself, but it would be nice to have it done by you.
(2) My design (“DVFPAHEW”) is classified as simple; however it has 125 um track width and spacing, so I am not sure how that can be?
(3) A remark: I use several features of the latest KiCAD, which makes my PCB come out wrong if I import directly. So I went the old-fashioned way of uploading Gerbers and a drill file, which works.
Two suggestions are to (1) indicate which KiCAD versions you support on your upload page; and (2) to state that it is (still) possible to upload Gerbers, which is useful in cases like mine. This fact isn’t currently indicated on the upload page.
At the moment we check your design for things like elongated pads or milling, layer count etc. but not the copper features. You will need set the surface finish to ENIG to use the complex design rule rating. But I agree that this is counterintuitive and we are working on it.
We will always support the import of Gerber files.
Could you please list what features you used? We support the newest Kicad Update (7.0.2) though for some things like custom fonts its required to generate the Gerber locally.
You will need set the surface finish to ENIG to use the complex design rule rating.
I did that (as I wanted that anyway), but the rating in the left panel on the page still said “Simple”. It is quite confusing indeed. I did order 25 pieces so I mostly just hope they will come out right at 125 um trace width and spacing.
We will always support the import of Gerber files.
Great, but the “upload design” page doesn’t say that. A cursory reading suggests that you only support a bunch of tool-specific formats; there is a link to “Help” which just takes me to the generic landing page of the Community forum. All in all, it’s not very clear.
The feature I used was, indeed, usage of a custom truetype font (I use that for logos and such). I think this is impossible to support as long as the KiCAD PCB file doesn’t embed the relevant font data in its PCB file format. So it’s logical; but a note to explain this in the upload page would be useful. Also, mention of the supported versions of the tools you use on your side would be helpful.
The tutorial you mention above does not mention however that it is a good idea to provide IPC files even for bare board production. Please consider changing.
The reply says: “If you just want to order bare PCBs thats already everything you need.” At this point the user is not requested to provide the IPC file. But from what I understand from the discussion “Ask me …” above, E-Check without provided IPC file is not as extensive as it would be with a provided IPC file. So I see some relevance. Please correct me, if I am wrong.
It would also be helpful if you could add a direct link, you just shared the general thread of the microcontroller forum which is too long to look trough.