Borders in Eagle

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1

I just received an order of boards and to my surprise, the boards were routed larger than expected. I say larger because I was using several edge subd connectors and the boards were sized to include the entire silkscreen, including the “phantom” screening that is normally only seen in Eagle.

One of these boards was a design that I have submitted in the past, but it was routed the right size that first time.

I have been conversing with BPCB through email and they claim my borders are not correct.

So here is my question, is the “Dimension” layer the proper way to gauge the board’s size? This is how I have been doing it since I started with Eagle and I have not had a problem untill this go around. Is there somthing I am missing?

Thanks,

2

I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but the dimension layer is not used to determine the outside of the boards.

The SFE-special.CAM job doesn’t do anything with that layer. Also, If you look at the list of files that they want you to send in, there is nothing about a board outline layer (.BOR) that most PCB houses use.

It appears to me that the Spark Fun guys take the files we send and panelize them into the large panel. During this, spark fun probably adds routing information for Gold Phoenix to seperate the boards. It appears they just do it by eye. To help them, draw the outline of your board in the top copper layer, or one of the layers that get put into the top silkscreen. I also fixed the parts in my library (like the DB-9) not to have any “overhang” to avoid confusion.

Same thing applies for the milling layer. It’s ignored if you follow the eagle tutorial and use SFE-special.cam. I had to change a slot to a series of overlapping drills, which they seemed to not have any problem with and came out nice…

Chris

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Actually, now that I think about it, Gold Phoenix may just cut them out by eye on their end. I say this because when I order multiple copies of a board, they all tend to be slightly different sizes. Doesn’t appear they are routed via CNC or anything-- which is probably why they don’t need .BOR files.