No, I just didnt see the point in having 2 layers if i was only soldering on the one side. I thought it might save some money but to be honest like people have said above it doesnt really cost anything at all buying from chinese fabricatiors. I want to support local business but it’s too expensive. I got some quotes from a few companies in the UK but they were 10x the amount. They gave me 1 sided quotes after I sent gerbers without top layer file. Lead times were awful too.
I have an important nitpick.
I do not know about new single sided boards. But older boards which were single sided generally had through hole components on top, with the plating on the bottom. EDIT: (If you think about it, that is pretty much what you need to do if you are wave soldering, which I think was the predominant method.) So if the THT component is soldered snug to the board then the plating cannot easily lift, because the THT component is not free to move either closer to or further from the board.
I suppose that a single sided board with only SMT components might have more of an issue of pads lifting. But of course, SMT pads are not plated through on even a 4 layer board unless you have via in pad. One other variable is that single sided boards were generally made with cheaper material…phenolic instead of FR4…and for some reason I think that copper adhesion was not as good.
Also, for those of us who didn’t take apart electronics in the 1960’s - often time the leads of components were “clinched.” They were folded over onto the pad, locking the part to the board. That made the board more reliable, but made harvesting components as a kid difficult.
Yes. I store the paste layer in the ASSY directory as these files are what is needed to FAB the IMS
So you are talking surface mount not through hole ? that would make sense.
completely, you can’t do through-hole with IMS and while there are … ways… the intent of an IMS is to be mounted onto a heatsink
High quantity single sided had always been the bottom side only. Even more recently when some SMD was added on the underside with THT on the top, to be soldered by the wave solder machine. This was a horrible production process for some feature telephone sets.