I am new to KiCad and trying to make a fairly simple PCB design. Below shows one side which contains a surface-mount chip.
The problem is that on the opposite side there is a battery holder which is through-hole connected and this will touch two of the pins at the top of the SMD chip as shown.
Those pins on the chip are not used at all, but still, is there a way to add some sort of electrical insulation here to stop the through-hole connector touching the pins? Or any other solution recommended. Thanks in advance.
The easiest solution is to rearrange the footprints to the avoid any overlapping of pads. If that is not possible for some reason, then you can remove the pads that are overlapping and not needed. Use the Edit Footprint feature from the footprint properties to remove the unused pads and save it just to your project. This way, the library footprint won’t be modified. You also need to pay attention when you are soldering both the SMD and THT components.
@vishnumaiea Thanks for your reply. I could remove the pads with Edit Footprint. However this design will go to a PCB design company afterwards to develop multiple boards. They will use this same chip directly. I’m wondering if they will have a method of isolating the pads based on my footprints and PCB design.
Why don’t you rotate the battery and place it behind the small footprint on the right? A experienced PCB designer would never place a thriough hole component this way because the wires have to go through the board to mount the component correctly.
Just don’t do that and place the components somewhere else. Even if you remove the pads, remember that the THT pads will have a wire through them, which would still collide with the chip and the chip would prevent soldering there anyway.
It just doesn’t make sense to do it this way.
Also make sure that the silkscreen line doesn’t go over the SMD pads.
Hi @RaptorUK . The frustrating thing is, there isn’t any surface mount version of that type of holder which I don’t understand.There are different surface mount coin battery holders, but the footprint will not suit the design. Too big.
