So I just recieved my boards…Doing a quick glance at the board, there are no drill holes on pin1 of all of my through-hole connectors. Any place which has a square pad has no drill hole in it.
I need to get this board out for demo, so I decide, “I’ll work around it…”. I get all of my SMT components mounted and power supply running.
Plug it in, and no worky…After some testing, I find something even more funny…There are no drill holes in my Via’s. They are just pads.
??? I have no problem blaming myself for mistakes on boards, but really? I had to wait 20 days for boards that weren’t done right?..but not just ‘not done right’…like half the holes aren’t drilled.
All of the holes are showing up on my gerbers and drill files.
Why would some of the holes get missed on the through hole connectors, but not others? Why did my vias get missed?
It’s dissappointing because my project is already on the line now, and I can’t afford to lose my job over mistakes like this. I am in enough of a pinch as it is.
My order number was 9519. If there is something that I did wrong, please let me know. Unfortunately, I can’t have this mistake happen again. Unfortunately, at this point I will have to go to another board house.
I’ve never had BatchPCB make mistakes as big as what you wrote about, but I have had mistakes made (mainly vias not plated through and shorts between traces). If your gerbers show holes and there are no holes, then Batch made a mistake.
My attitude is that BatchPCB is for people who can afford to wait for boards, but who cannot afford much board. Normally this is students and hobbyist or sometimes engineers who are doing relatively unimportant or non time critical side projects.
Each time I’ve had some problem with a board Batch has made, they have offered to re-make the board for free. They were apologetic and very nice about it. My understanding is that this is not a ‘professional’ service in the way that other, much more expensive, services are. I would not use BatchPCB for a board that is critical to my company or myself that needed to be done on time. That’s not saying anything bad about Batch, rather I’ve come to the conclusion that there are some things that it is very good for, and others that it is not.
Anyway, I’m sorry that you had such a bad experience - my impression is that yours is a very rare case.
Not having specific holes, like on the square pads only sounds like a gerber problem to me as well. I’d have to agree, BatchPCB is there to help hobbyists who are making small boards. It’s not a professional service.
Did you verify your gerbers with a viewer? If you are going to resubmit to a regular board house, you might want to post them up here and someone might take a look at them for you.
I think most people just refer to the ‘gerbers’ and that automatically includes the drill file. At least I do, because it seems obvious. I’ll try to be more clear, because yes, they are not the same
Are all your pin1 holes a different size than the others, because it kind of sounds like that drill bit snapped and they didn’t catch it at the factory.