Hi, I’m working on a PCB and the space I have is very tight. There are some pushbuttons that are so in the edge that the holes are cut but the edge lines. I had several errors in the DRC that I was willing to ignore, seeing the 3D model, they would work if the PCB was like that, but they were rejected at JLC (the reason they gave is: “Hi Sir/ Madam, There are no drill in your file, please kindly check!”).
I’ve managed to reduce the number of errors significantly, to end up with these:
The rules which PCB factories use are quite random and can even vary day by day, or by who handles your design at the factory.
The “half holes” in the middle of your connector are regarded as “castellated holes” for the manufacturer, and some don’t do that. Others charge extra for it (they are more difficult to make reliably) or have extra conditions for them (such as the side of the PCB they are on). It is likely you have to specify this during ordering.
One thing you can do is make a few “bumps” on the PCB around those holes, and then sand off those bumps yourself. A bit of a nuisance, but doable for a small number of PCB’s and any PCB manufacturer will accept it.
For the other big pads…
In general it’s bad practice to have any copper extending to the edge of the PCB. During routing of the outside, this copper may be smeared out to the side of the PCB (by a partly worn router bit), and this can cause shorts. One way around this is to modify the pads so they do not touch the edge of the PCB.
I’m afraid I am very noob. This is my first time designing a pcb, so I’m not sure what that is. Is that something you need to select when plotting the pcb into gerber files?
Reason is I always have a look at the list of files inside the zip archive to check that:
There are 9 files
There are no duplicates under a slightly different name
The file dates are correct, an older file means it wasn’t generated recently and is out of date
It’s only a little diligence to avoid wasting time going back and forth with the manufacturer.
Those 3 are not needed. Most cheap fabs don’t want a job file, your board parameters are specified on the order form. The paste layers are for solder paste stencils for SMD assembly. So you can untick those.
You have third option - use defined by you footprint not containing cooper at conflicting pads.
Buttons have internally connected pins and you need not to connect to all of them.
I think the problem was actually just the drill files missing. I re-uploaded the files more than an hour ago and are in data preparation status since then. The first time they were rejected almost straight away, so I have hope.
My only fear is that I messed up with the schematics or something, but I can’t do anything about it.
