Creating half moon pad for edge connector

I hereby certify that I am not simply asking someone else to design a footprint for me.

This is an auto-generated message that is in place on the “footprints” section of the KiCad.info forum. If I remove it and ask for a footprint to be designed anyway, I understand that I will be subject to forum members telling me to go design my own footprint or referring me to a 3rd party footprint site.

I’m busy with a project trying to replicate a PCB from a old retro computer.

The edge connector looks like this, with a rounded half moon shape on the end.

image

I’ve created a SMD rectangle pad but am not sure how to add the shape to the end.
In PCB Editor using the lines and arc I’ve replicated the shape but this cant’ be right as the lines do not have pad properties and I also can’t route tracks through it.

image

Any tips for where I’m going wrong?

Running 8.0.4 on Ubuntu.

press ctrl+e twice with the pad selected. This will merge any overlapping objects (like your arc) into the pad object. To create the protrusion at the top, just draw a filled rectangle and do the same again.

2 Likes

Right Mouse click on the pad and select “Edit Pad as Graphic Shapes”. So you know the name of the function for the hotkey quoted by Jonathan :slightly_smiling_face:

When one pad is finalized, right mouse click again and select " Create from Selection > Create Array ".

This function is brilliant for creating a row of pads. In your case, all you need to do is fill in the number of pads, starting pad number, and distance between pad centres.

Thanks. That did the trick. Had no idea about this function so learned something new.

1 Like

Do you know why the connector has that little bump at the top?

Such bumps are quite normal for edge connectors. They are a part of the panel. The PCB manufacturer often adds these during manufacturing to short all these pads together, so all pads act as a single electrode during gold plating. After the gold plating this part is usually completely removed due to routing the PCB and the beveling on the edge connector.

It is one of the subtleties for edge connectors. If you want to add these “shorts” yourself, you also have to extend the PCB, and this creates another ambiguity about the actual size of the PCB. I do not know enough about these subtleties to tell how this can be done without ambiguity or rework at the PCB factory.

Yes, I know that.
Do you know why they aren’t used anymore?