Milled blind grooves or slots

Hello,

Very new to KiCad and PCB layout in general. I’ve googled for a while and found nothing on this. Is it possible to design blind groves or slots? If I have a PCB that is 3mm thick, is there a way for me to add say a 20mm wide 60mm long groove with rounded ends that only goes about 1.5 mills in? Literally just a routed slot?

I’ve been messing around in the edge.cuts layer and obviously when I make this type of shape it translates it to a cutout. Just wondering if there’s a way to do this so that I can output a gerber file that contains those types of slots.

This is a non standard operation.
The first thing to do for such things is to find a manufacturer that does “custom milling”, and talk to them (read their website) on how this works with them.

The custom milling will probably be a gerber file from a separate layer, and you can then use any layer for that, and it probably should contain only the "custom milling part. One of the “User” layers should be suitable for this.

I do this sort of thing fairly often…

I CNC Mill my PCB’s and use an Eco Layer for Non_PCB Shape milling (I use Edge-cut layer for only the PCB shape, my personal preference…).

A shape that does Not go fully through the board is most often called a “Pocket”.

I use CopperCam for generating the Gcode for milling. But, have also used FreeCAD’s ‘Path’ workbench to do it (before switching to CopperCam).

Kicad Does not have this feature (of partial depth) but, you can try setting the Board’s thickness in a duplicated PCB file and fuss with trying to get what you want. good luck with that part :slightly_frowning_face:

I have no experience getting a PCB Fab House to do ‘Pocketing’ but, have had them do other custom things (20 yrs ago) and Notated the details on a CAD drawing. It worked out O.K. example-last screenshot…

Screen Shot 2020-07-22 at 11.56.13 AM IMG_20200223_122529254_HDR.pngcopy

oldGPpcb

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