I am new to KiCad and I am creating a PCB with a screen (among other stuff like a few buttons). The screen is quite big but I want to keep the PCB at 100x100mm max. Will this work when I send the board imaged below to a board house? It looks weird but I don’t know how the manufacturing process works so I can’t judge whether it will work or not. Thanks in advance.
As far as I know, castellation is a request that needs to be discussed in advance with the board manufacture. So they will tell you how they would like that to be represented and will make the right quotation for you.
It your manufacturer is not aware that you need castellation, that is what will happen:
@Nilz
Are those mounting holes for the display?
Can you make sure that nothing will be able to get hold of the bolt-heads or nuts/thread behind the board and try yo pry them out (as I’m sure the display has not much ‘flesh’ around the hole and will be the only thing keeping the bolt “straight”?
I wouldn’t worry about the castellation too much, just get a bit more more copper on the top/bottom surface there (make the pads larger) to counter the forces when it’s being routed, as the chance of it being ripped away by the router bit is pretty big otherwise.
PS:
undeclared small castellations made by a Chinese fab with a bit extra pad to keep the copper (holes sizes ~0.7mm), work pretty well. Won’t look like real castellations, but work well enough.
Not sure if it really fits your case as you want cut-away mounting holes that are a lot bigger…
PPS: next size up is eurocard size (100x160) which should/was pretty common and a bit more economical than other sizes… might be worth to check with your fab (or others, there was a price comparison site for this) if it’s not too expensive to go up in size?
Thanks both! I know these aren’t “real” castellations, but I didn’t know how else I would call it.
Anyway, I realize that the LCD itself has cutouts so having cutouts on the PCB as well means that you can simply pull the bolts right out. I have a few buttons on my board as well but since I can’t judge dimensions very well yet I wanted to leave lots of space between them and the screen. However, I am going to 3D Print an enclosure and the screen will be flush with the buttons so spacing isn’t that critical actually, so I made the mounting holes fit on the PCB.
I am looking at getting a few projects made by dirtypcb as cheap as possible, so larger than 100x100mm would mean large increase in cost. I’m quite new to all this stuff so don’t want to invest money on something that could turn out to be useless (though the experience will be useful ).
Thanks a lot @Joan_Sparky, I’ve only been using KiCad and browsing this forum for a few days but I can’t imagine where this forum would be without your help!
Check out this: