I have a PCB that fails to pass an audit cycle by a chinese mob PCB-way. They say;
Sorry but here a problem with your Gerber files : there is no board outline/profile. (.GKO)
please check it and re-uploading the correct Gerber files on our site for check again.
Now I can load the edge-cuts gbr into the gerber viewer and it shows the 2 concentric circles.
I can also load it into the online gerber viewer and it displays.
The PCB is called a Camera Light Ring, and is essentially 12 leds mounted on a PCB that go around a small lense. The lense is 15mm in diameter, and the PCB OD is 40mm. I just cannot get this to pass, and they always come back with the above comment.
All other PCBs, which have only been rectangles have been no problem.
What KiCAD version are you using?
What are your settings for gerber plotting (screenshot of dialog)?
I see on the google.drive folder that the edge.cuts file has the ending .gm1 - did you upload this as .gko (renamed) to test if that satisfies them?
Maybe their tool can’t handle circles and needs arcs instead?
Apparently there is a bug in some old gerber software with circles, because they are represented as arcs that start and end at the same place (or something like that). Their software might simply display nothing, so they don’t even see the edge. If so, I think you can draw two arcs instead.
But may well be just the extension. Not sure whether it is a language thing, but some of the chinese employees seem to lack initiative which you or I might think obvious…
Well it passed this time, and all I did was changed to arc’s. So in case any one else decides to use them, do not use circles. Much appreciated for the help.
You might not have noticed, but his problem was solved when he switched from circles to arcs on the outline layer for the boardhouse to be able to work with his gerbers.
I’d suggest you improve your reading comprehension.
Nelsa, I am very happy with PCBWAY. I use the DHL delivery and they arrive very quickly. I just could not get a PCB that was round to pass audit. They could not help me fix it. This forum helped me. You have read my posts above incorrectly. I would easily recommend PCBWAY. The manufacture time was fast, the web interface is excellent, and the final products to date have been good quality. On top of that the prices are better than anywhere else I have been. I will be using them in the near future. Please reread above as you have the wrong impression.
I already flagged 3 of his 4 first posts on this forum as the other 3 where essentially spam… thank god there is a limit of 4 posts per 24 hours for the first couple of days for newbies.
From this, and similar posts in other discussion groups, I get the impression that some board fabricators do not support all of the commands described in the RS-274X specification. This is a problem in its own right, since I believe that “Extended Gerber” specification was developed in the mid 1990’s so it’s been around for 20 years or so. It is aggravated by vendors who seem to be unaware that they are not compliant. Both @midworld08, and PCB-Way, could have saved time and effort if they had told him, “Your Gerber files call out circles. Our CAM machines don’t implement circles. Try redrafting your layout using intersecting arcs in place of circles and re-submit.”
In the long run it may be helpful for vendor web sites, in addition to stating things like minimum trace widths and spacing, to mention the Gerber commands they don’t support. This could be especially important in the near future, since I understand the latest update to RS-274X adds support for panelizing, which has always been problematical.
That challenges my speculations! They are among a handful of well-known Chinese board fabs and I guessed they do a fairly high volume of business, That image doesn’t seem consistent with a penny-pinching operation that can’t afford up-to-date software. If I had to nominate a candidate as likely to hang onto outdated software, it would be a mom-and-pop operation turning out a couple dozen jobs a day on machinery rescued from the scrapper.
Oh . . . and don’t think you have to go as far as China to find commercial organizations running software of questionable lineage.
In the last 10 years I’ve probably had about a dozen boards from offshore fabs (China and elsewhere). They all functioned. Workmanship never got above “average”; some were pretty ratty; and one in particular would have been rejected by an automated assembly line. I recall looking at that board and thinking, “If my circuit meets performance specs on THIS board I’ll have no problems with tolerances or assembly issues when it goes to production.”.
I am lucky in that most of my designs are really quite simple, so I’m not to be effected easily by standards, unless you can’t make my PCB.
That said, you are not alone in the standards getting left behind. With the accelerated development of all technology we have let much fall behind. Look at CNC mill and lathe machines, they we all based on 274 before. But manufacturers advanced so quick that it got left behind and they developed their own “conversational” interface to make up for the slowness of the standard development. This meant departures from the standard, but it didn’t matter it gave people a market edge if they had equipment to handle the work load better. Slowly the standards are catching up. Gee panelization, was available to a CNC machine conversational interface 10yrs ago.
But yes it would be nice if these guys would have looked at the PDF and seen a circle and said, sorry we that looks like it is a circle, change it to arcs and re-submit.
I work in the oil and gas industry, and even these standards have got left behind the new tech that is available, and it has allowed manufactures of subsea equipment to release complete tooling that only works with their equipment. Which in the long run spells disaster, gee we have a leak, and our tool is broken…oh dear the parts are 4 weeks away…where before all tools slotted into the same holes.
