I think you mean resigned.
Consign: âassign; commit decisively or permanently.â
More proper to say âconsigned myselfâ but whatever. you get the point
From my experiences @jlcpcb it is not that much cheaper to order small panels instead of separated PCBs. They do charge a fee for having multiple designs in one panel.
Especially if one uses SMD assembly and the others do not, split the order.
I also thought that the shipping costs at jlcpcb are related to weight. I donât place orders per 500pcb with or without panels for comparison tho. So you can atleast upload things and see what it actually costs before deciding.
And ofcourse the one small drawback of panels are⌠mouse bites. I for instance make boxes from PCB and than this matters. But ofcourse you make a PCB where PCBs are ment for, this is no issue. I personally donât like to sand things.
Kind regards,
Bas
Some years ago, Microcirtec refused to process my panel designs and deleted my address from the customers list. I am using a commercial panelizer GerbTool to merge designs from Kicad, Eagle, Altium and Mentor.
You can create something as simple as a dxf showing how to create the panel. This dxf would show the shape and position of the three designs, where you want the mouse bites, and any handling frame that you might want. This could be enough.
Then the manufacturer would combine the Gerbers following that dxf.
Obviously this is not available for âPCB poolâ services.
As others mentioned not sure if this approach would save you much money, unless big volume.
And you can run into problems with the depanelisation process or making the assembly more complicatedâŚ
There are some tools to combine Gerbers manually as well. (Others have mentioned this)
In any case, check with the assembler first (unless you are assembling the board yourself)