Missing silkscreen shapes

Community PCB Design
1

Greetings all,

I just relized that some of the components shapes I have on the silkscreen layer gets lost once I submit it to the bot.

The screenshot would explain what I mean :slight_smile: [top: view in orcad, bottom: batchbot output]

http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/8910 ā€¦ rorgk9.png

Is there something I should know about/pay attention about arc shapes? I have some other arcs on the board though, so it is really confusing :slight_smile:

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

2

Do the arcs appear when you check your Gerbers in Viewmate? If not, make sure the arcs are in your silkscreen layer when you send the layout to the CAM processor.

-Bill

3

ah, I bet I know what the issue is. eagle parts are a complete mishmash of which layer has the ā€œsilk screenā€ data. It can be in any of a number of different layers - tPlace, bPlace, tDocu, bDocu, Reference or Document. Try turning off different layers in board view and see what happens. You can include or exclude any layers when you run the gerber cam job.

4

I donā€™t know what happened but my previous comment got dismissed by the spam control of the forumā€¦ i guessā€¦

here we go again, the screenshot looks like this:

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/8387 ā€¦ gicid7.png

That is the .SST gerber, and honestly I canā€™t see anything wrong with it.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

PS: I am using OrCAD, not Eagle :slight_smile:

5

anyone?

6

Perhaps the silkscreen line widths are too narrow. You have some that look OK and some narrow ones, most PCB suppliers have minimum line widths for silkscreen, below which they donā€™t get printed. Itā€™s a good idea to have them all the same size, anyway, it looks much neater.

Leon

7

leon_heller:
Perhaps the silkscreen line widths are too narrow. You have some that look OK and some narrow ones, most PCB suppliers have minimum line widths for silkscreen, below which they donā€™t get printed. Itā€™s a good idea to have them all the same size, anyway, it looks much neater.

Leon

Hi Leon,

The width is the same as the 1206 footprint I am using on R2, R3 etc and they seem to be fine. Do you reckon as it is an arc it should be thicker than the others (like the resistors)?

Also another thing that got me was the thickness of the silkscreen prints that the batchbot generates. On the gerber viewer they seem to be thinner than the batchbot one, is it normal?

Thanks.

8

Wasnā€™t there something on another topic about BatchPCBā€™s software not being able to handle arcs properly?

*Brian

9

EmbeddedMan:
Wasnā€™t there something on another topic about BatchPCBā€™s software not being able to handle arcs properly?

*Brian

Hello Brian,

I searched the forum for ā€œsilkscreen+arcā€ but couldnā€™t find the topic you mentioned.

If it is a batchbot only problem, does it mean that even though I wonā€™t see the arcs on the silkscreen generated by the batchbot, Iā€™ll probably get them printed in the fab process? Or does the batchbot somehow ā€˜re-generateā€™ the gerber files we submit, getting rid of arcs?

Thanks.

10

There were some arc issues, but I think Iā€™ve fixed them. [If anybody is still having issues with arcs being messed, email dcarne _ at _ this domain /w a testcase and Iā€™ll see whats going on. [Implementing the gerber spec is like eating broken glass while blindfolded]

If you want, drop me an email with the URL of the product the bot generated and Iā€™ll take a look at the files.

Cheers,

ā€“David Carne

11

Its another arc bug :(.

Iā€™ll find a fix for it as soon as I have time.

Cheers,

ā€“David Carne

12

Thanks David :slight_smile: