| Copper Slivers | These are small copper features which are created when a copper area is filled by an aperture which is too small and usually occur in areas where trace and pad clearance intersect. They are normally less than the minimum feature size allowed in the Design Rules and can break off and move, potentially causing shorts during the manufacturing process. |
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| Non-Flashed Pads | When creating footprints, please created all pads using flashed apertures. Do not create pads using drawn traces. This leads to problems and extra work when creating e-test data, and can also lead to large data files, which are difficult to transfer by email. |
| Copper Area created using Flashed Pads | Please create all copper pour areas using traces and not using flashed pads. |
| Spacing violations within the same net | These are often an issue when the tracks have been created using an autorouter and the minimum clearance has not been set for same net connections. |
| Soldermask Bridges | The minimum soldermask bridge we recommend is 0.15mm. Bridge sizes less than this are normally located around tight pitched components and are caused when the soldermask is expanded to create the minimum clearance required for manufacture. If a soldermask bridge is found to be less than 0.15mm then it is normally removed and this can cause problems later on when soldering. |
| Silkscreen Text | When creating component footprints, please keep the component names 0.1mm away from the pads. When it comes to manufacturing the silkscreen is clipped from the soldermask, and if any silkscreen text is touching the soldermask pads then it will be removed. This can lead to a silkscreen which unreadable and it does not look good cosmetically. Likewise, if the text is smaller than our recommended minimum size, then it can also be unreadable when printed. |
| Text on Copper Layers | All manufacturers recommend that some form of text is added to the copper layers; for example, a part number or company name. This gives reassurance to the manufacturer that the board is being built correctly. As you look at the board through the top side, the text on the top side must be readable and the text on the bottom side must be unreadable. |
| Creating Gerber/NcDrill Outputs | Always use the same units when outputting Gerber and NcDrill files, and do not put any offsets in the outputs. This means that the gerbers can be loaded into the manufacturers CAM software without rounding errors and with the layers aligned. Make sure that the hole sizes supplied to the manufacturer are the finished hole sizes. Output gerber files in RS274X format. This format contains all the aperture information embedded in the gerber file. |
| NcDrill | Please remove any double drills in same location and overlapping drills before creating the drill output. This can cause drill breakages during manufacturing. |
| Layer Names | Give your Gerber outputs names that make the function of each layer clear to the manufacturer. "Base_1.gbx" and "Base_2.gbx" are not good names because you cannot tell what the layer function is from the name. Whereas "Base_Top.gbx" and "Base_Bottom.gbx" are good names as they provide more information about the layer function. |
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