For reasons that will stay concealed up until a long time in the future, I just recently had a requirement to panelize a few PCBs. Panelization is the art of taking PCB styles you already have, whether they’re KiCad board files, Eagle board files, or just Gerbers, as well as turning them into a single collection of PCBs that can be sent off to a fabulous house.
Now this is panel racing
If you’re still wondering what this means, take a look at the last board you got from OSH Park, Seeed, Itead, or filthy PCBs. around the perimeter of your board, you’ll discover some rough spots. These are ‘mouse bites’ as well as tabs, locations where the boards are strung together to type a gigantic rectangular panel sent off to a manufacturer. You can inspect out this excellent interview with [Laen] from OSH Park to get an concept of exactly how this works, however the fundamental process is to take a lot of Gerbers, add tabs as well as mouse bites, solve the knapsack problem, as well as send the completed panel off to a board house.
Panelizing boards is something most of us won’t have to do often. Really, you only want a panel of boards when you’re producing something. For small-scale production as well as prototypes, bare boards will do just fine. just by virtue of the truth that panelizing boards is far less typical than throwing some Gerbers at OSH Park or Seeed, there aren’t many (good) tutorials, as well as even fewer (good) tools to do so. This is exactly how you panelize boards quickly as well as quickly utilizing open source tools.
Det jeg vil ha
The DEF con 24 badge, in a panel
Panelizing boards, or putting several copies of a board in a single Gerber file, is nothing new. We’ve seen it performed in Eagle with a ULP script, as well as we’ve seen it performed in KiCad with some Python. [Dave Jones] did a panelization tutorial for Altium. all of these have their downsides. putting more than one board style on a panel is not covered by the usual tools as well as tutorials. most techniques of panelizing boards only work with rectangular boards. Altium will do anything, however Altium is pricey.
What I requirement is a technique to take more than one weirdly-shaped board, as well as put it on a rectangular panel. requirement an example of this? inspect out the DEF con 24 badge to the right. This is a weird-shaped board, designed to in shape into a rectangular panel for automated assembly. instead of v-grooves, the board is just milled out of the panel, held on with mouse bites, or little tabs of fiberglass as well as holes. extremely clever implementations of this method likewise enable for pads as well as traces on the panel for programming each private board.
Can you do this in Eagle as well as KiCad, the most prominent tools for low-scale PCB style as well as fabrication? Yes, however it’s hard. Altium will do it easily, however that’s truly a tool for people who are producing tens of countless boards. To date, I’ve only discovered one tool that just enables you to decrease several Gerber data on a board as well as merge them.
Gerber Panelizer
The finest tool I’ve discovered for panelizing multiple board styles with routing as well as mouse bites comes from [Stijn Kuipers]. His PCB Panelizer (available on GitHub) is the very best thing I’ve discovered to take Gerbers you’ve already designed as well as turn them into an quickly manufacturable panel. before discovering this amazing tool, I spent about a day trying to figure out exactly how to panelize Gerbers. After discovering this tool, I was able to produce the panel I needed in about twenty minutes. Gerber Panelizer is a amazing tool, as well as I’ll be dedicating the rest of this publish to the ins as well as outs of this simple as well as simple method to produce panels of PCBs.
Using Gerber Panelizer
Using Gerber Panelizer might not be simpler. All you have to do is set up the size of the panel, decrease .zip data of your Gerbers onto the panel, add some breaktabs, as well as export the merged gerbers. After your computer does a bit bit of thinking, you get a panel of boards, prepared to send to a fab.
Step 1: open Gerber Panelizer
Step 2: define your panel size
This is the Panel Properties window. utilize this to define the board size, fill empty space, set the offset, etc
Step 3: decrease Gerbers onto the window
Step 4: location Breaktabs
Step 5: enjoy a panelized board
Of course, you’re not restricted to square or rectangular boards with Gerber Panelizer. any type of shape will do, as well as the ‘Fill empty Area’ in the Panel Properties window makes producing panels of weirdly-shaped PCBs easy.
I whipped up a quick artsy board of the GitHub Unicorn (five minutes in Eagle) as well as stole the source for the Freeduino. This is the very besT Eksempel på hva Gerber Panelizer kan gjøre. Med dette verktøyet kan du panelize merkeligformede brett, samt sette mer enn en enkelt stil på et panel.
Advarsler til Gerber Panelizer
Gerber Panelizer er et utmerket verktøy som gjør at du kan raskt så vel som raskt sy flere Gerber-data sammen i et enkelt, lett-produsent bord. Dessverre er DIY PCB-publikum og åpne maskinvareelskere generelt, billiggjørskifter. Tradisjonell visdom sier de eneste verktøyene som er verdt å ha, er de som er de som er fri som i øl, en uenighet som ofte er tvunget som “gratis som i tale”. Dette betyr at programvaren tilbys uten støtte, samt vanlig med skadede funksjoner.
Gerber Panelizer er ikke uten betydelige problemer, selv om noen av skylden kan rettes på Kicad. Kicad-filosofien skiller seg mellom malt, belagte lag samt den endelige utklippet av styret. I Kicad betyr dette at det er en forskjell mellom .gko så vel som .gml Gerber-filer. KICAD, i sin uendelige visdom, bestemte seg i sin uendelige visdom, utskjæringslaget i styret skulle bruke Data Extension .GM1 som en utdating Gerber. Dette har utløst mye forvirring, men den gode nyheten er at dette problemet vil bli løst kort tid. OpenGL på Windows med NVIDIA-drivere er et varmt rot av en dumpsterbrann. Dette problemet kan løses ved å benytte min bærbare datamaskin i stedet for min desktop-battlestation. Additonally støtter den nåværende utgivelsen (i det minste på tidspunktet for denne skrivingen) ikke å legge til breaktabs mellom en Gerber-data, så vel som “Fyll tomområdet” -området. Dette var en feil løst av [arsenijs] over på hackaday.io. Jeg skylder ham for å fikse den feilen for meg, men det viktigste her er at jeg bidrar penger til å åpne kildeutvikling.
Er dette en perfekt løsning på panelizing PCB? Nei. Ideelt sett vil du ha fiducials langs kanten av panelet ditt, så valget samt plasseringsmaskinen kan fortelle hvor i området er panelet. Du vil også ha noen M4 hull langs siden av brettet, så valget samt plasseringsmaskinen kan flytte den langs produsenten. Dette er imidlertid ganske faktisk den enkleste så vel som enkleste metoden for å betjene mange brett. Ingen andre verktøy kommer nær Gerber Panelizer’s enkel bruk.
Til tross for disse problemene er Gerber Panelizer et bare fantastisk stykke programvare som skal være i alles verktøykasse. Ja, det er problemer, men det ser ut som det viktigste vil bli løst i neste utgivelse.
Hvis du vil leke med disse Gerber-filene, kan du oppdage dem her på Hackaday.io.