Are these parts actual components (JLC)

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1

I’m showing my inexperience here.

When going through the process on jlcpcb it says the following parts have not been selected. A mounting hole, Fiduciaks and a contact push button(the type that ate metal contacts in the PCB)

,H1_3,H1_2,H1,H2_4,H2_3,H2_2,H2 MountingHole MountingHole_2.7mm_M2.5 No Part Selected

KIKIT_FID_T_1,KIKIT_FID_T_2,KIKIT_FID_T_3,KIKIT_FID_T_4 Fiducial Fiducial No Part Selected

SW1_4,SW1_3,SW1_2,SW1,SW2_4,SW2_3,SW2_2,SW2,SW3_4,SW3_3,SW3_2,SW3 SW_Push Butn No Part Selected

Should I ignore the warning, are these actual components you pick from the library of parts or are they just created in the PCB manufacturing process?

Do you actually pick a mounting hole from the library of parts or does jlc just mill a mounting hole from the Gerber design?

2

No you should not ignore them.

Yes, they are actual “components” / “footprints” that are picked from KiCad’s library and placed on the PCB.

However, some (or most) do not have to be placed as parts on the PCB. I assume you have opted for an assembly service. Some are clear from the description, such as mounting holes and fiducials. I am not so sure about some of the others. But overall, this means that you have not done your homework before you opted for the assembly service. You should go though the whole list, identify what they are and where they are on your PCB and then decide upon an action for each.

From memory, those assemblers often do assembly of SMT for cheap, and do not assembly for THT parts (or other non- standard) parts and you have to to those later yourself.

What most likely happened is:

  1. You placed mounting holes on the PCB.
  2. You send out the PCB to be manufactured (they only need gerber files for that).
  3. You also opted for PCB P&P and assembly.
  4. The BOM lists the mounting holes, and the P&P machine does not have a tape with mounting holes.
  5. JLC does not want to be guessing, so they just print out a list with possible problems, and it is for you to decide what to do with each of them.
1 Like
3

I’ve uploaded a panelized Gerber to jlcpcb yet it also has an option for “panel by customer” .

For testing, my panel is 2x2. The minimum quantity is 5 so the BOM tells me (2x2)x5 = 20x the components needed which is correct.

If I also check “panel by customer” and use 2x2 the BOM tells me I need 80x the number of parts. I.e 20 x (2x2)

So why does this option “panel by customer exist” does jlc not just use the panelized Gerber?

4

Again: Is this for PCB manufacturing or for PnP assembly? PnP takes more specialized setup time / costs so it’s sort of logical to have bigger batch size. For just the PCB, they should not care about footprints at all. Footprints are (most often) not even mentioned in Gerber files. Gerber files are (mostly) just a specialized vector drawing format.

5

If you upload already panelize PCB to JLC you have to choose “Single PCB” option (no “Panel by JLC” or “Panel by Customer”).
Panel by Customer is when you upload a not panelized PCB design and want to have it as a panel. You choose how many rows and columns, etc.

6

So whats the difference between panel by customer or panel by jlc?

7

TBH I’m not sure.
This is what the website says (if you hover over the question mark next to “Delivery format”):

The delivery format is the method in which you ask JLCPCB to produce and deliver your PCB design.

· Single PCB - Your design as is.

· Panel by Customer - You construct the PCB panel yourself and provide us the panelized data for PCB production.

· Panel by JLCPCB - We construct your panel with v-cut according to your need. (We only provide panelizing service for PCBs with regular shapes like rectangle and circle. For PCBs of irregular shapes, you need to panelize by yourself.)

Seems like “Panel by JLCPCB” gives them more flexibility to fit it between other jobs they have, but the result is probably very similar. Also I’ve just noticed that “Panel by JLC” also give you an option to add edge rails (on 2 or 3 sides), which “Panel by Customer” doesn’t give edge rails option at all.