Really nice. I like it! The only issue will be with T-Hex, but it’s easy to fix by leaving off one aluminum standoff at the top rear. That shouldn’t have any adverse effects.
Does the cost go up much if the board is not a complete rectangle, but instead has some edges different. Like if you look at the Arduino UNO, the edge is not completely a rect. Question is what shape would fit T-Hex?
Kurt
No extra costs that I’m aware of. If you retain the 3" width at the corners, say .188" in from each edge the standoffs will not be an issue. Let me know if that made sense. lol Good idea!
Maybe something like:
Not sure if PCBFabexpress allows this on their normal boards or not, can ask…
Kurt
Perfect! If they can’t do it then just make it square and I/we can cut it with a band saw. 8)
Sounds like they can do: I sent an email with the picture and got a couple of responses, including:
Not sure what is meant or if the Gerber files do this…
Question will be, should I do this. If so should I send you any of the current stuff to assemble and play with…
Kurt
Hi Kurt,
I’ve been following this thread from the side and I think I can answer this one. From the time I developed PCB’s (for prototyping) there where always 2 right ways to go with soldering pads. Make a soldering pad with a really really tiny hole in there. This makes centering the tiny drill easier for hand drilling. Or make solid pads for automatically drilled PCB’s. This prevents the drill from snapping.
The donut soldering pads with the large holes can cause few problems. For hand drilling the hole is to big to center so you can end up having the hole slightly off the middle. This will also drill away halve of the donut leaving a moon shaped pad. 2nd, the donut has very little contact with the PCB board which makes it very vulnerable, it is possible that the donut simply falls off by trying to drill it. 3th, the hole in the middle can be slightly to big for small components. If the hole in the board is smaller then the hole in the copper the contact is poor. Also keep in mind that in the etching process the etching material can also eat on the sides of the lines and pads. You can clearly see this if the boards are in to long. The lines will get thinner. Having donut pads will allow the etching material on both sides of the donut as well.
Also (nearly) solid pads are better in the PCB making process as well since there is less material to remove. If the PCB is made by etching, the etching material can only absorb a curtain amount of copper. The more copper you need to remove, the faster the etching material is saturated. If the PCB is milled, it simply takes longer.
I always used CadSoft EAGLE to design my PCB’s. I always had a custom set of pad’s with a small center hole since they didn’t come with the software by default.
Hope this makes sense.
Great work on the design btw!!
Xan
Thanks Xan,
That is what I thought. Actually I think they implied too much data out of the print image I sent them. I mainly wanted to find out if they had any problems with making the board not completely rectangular and the good news is no. I believe the actual Gerber files for the different layers are solid. For example here is an image from viewmate of the actual top layer:
I have been using Diptrace and have had to make some components and the like for these boards. In their current version, I can now go through a process and import eagle libraries, which I have done for example for the Sparkfun parts libraries. It has been fun.
Kurt
Hi Jim,
Did you have a chance to look over the silk screen data on the above .3? Since that picture above I did change VSVL jumper to VS=VL
Kurt
Thanks for the reminder. I have looked it over. I don’t see anything obvious. It looks like you put the pin numbers by the on board features, like 46 by the speaker that is fed from pin 46. Cool! Thanks, Jim
Sounds good, I just put an order in for 5 boards, with 5 day turn around…
Kurt
Awesome! Whoot!
Nice! It looks beautiful! 8)
Thanks,
How about this picture:
Next the hard part, try to align everything and plug it into a seeeduino board…
Kurt
It looks even beautiful-er! 8)
Kurt,
I have a set of the shield boards that Jim asked me (or rather my son) to assemble. But I am having trouble opening the Diptrace files from June. Can you upload PDFs of the schematic and layout for the latest boards?
Thanks,
Mike
Hi Mike, will work on putting up PDFs of both. I am using the latest released version of diptrace, which the files are probably not compatible with the older versions. You might want to update to the new version.
Kurt
Here are some PDFs, hope they help.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Kurt
BB Duino Shield SCH.pdf (57.4 KB)
BB Duino Shield BRD.pdf (44.9 KB)
Kurt,
Thanks. It probably is related to my version of Diptrace. I’ll install the latest.
Mike