In the process of making PCBS, drawing panel manufacturing drawings is an indispensable step. A manufacturing drawing for a single PCB only shows the drill holes and board characteristics of a single PCB, but these need to be combined into a single drawing for the entire panel. Depending on the specific needs of the different company or manufacturer, some design team will need to take over the creation of the panel drawings, including specifying the disassembly method and the arrangement of the panels in the panel.
If your design team will be creating panels, you can use a full set of native design tools in Altium Designer. Another option is to export the panel drawings to another program (most commonly AutoCAD) in order to complete the panel in a custom format or merge it with other data, such as mechanical drawings. Here's how you can create your drawing format and export your required panel drawings in Altium Designer.
In this article, a sample project is presented. The project is an LED connector board and it gives a good overview of the panel making drawing creation process.
Before you start creating panels, you should answer some important questions:
How do you plan to remove the PCB? What panel sizes are supported by your manufacturer? Do they specify tool hole and V-groove cutting requirements? Does the panel need a reference point?
If tab routing is used in the panel, what is the tool size?
If you can access this information, then you will have enough data to start creating your own panel.
Inside Altium Designer, the main tool we want to use to create panels is the embedded board array. This gives you a starting plate arrangement where you can start adding tool holes, dimensions, reference points, layer number etchings, and screen marks.
Once the embedded board array object is placed in the PCB editor, you can add any mouse bite or V-slot location to the PCB panel. Placing the mouse bite involves placing the notches in the panel and drawing the drill points in the remaining label area of the connecting plate. This is discussed in this article.
In the example above, we will add a V-shape to the PCB to indicate the strip line. Note that V-grooves require a certain amount of clearance around the tool to allow room for the size of the V-grooves and the copper clearance around the plate profile. In the example above, there is no flat layer or laying of copper, so nearby copper or elements will have sufficient clearance.
V-shaped lines are marked in the mechanical layer as shown below. As we'll see later, it may be useful to copy it to the drill layer.
Because the drilling of the PCB and tools will automatically fill the drilling layer, the manufacturing characteristics of the panel are completed. Some manufacturers offer templates (such as DXF or DWG files) that can be used to create panel drawings like the one shown above and import them into the mechanical layer to get started.
Draftsman treats PCB panels the same as other PCBS, and various views can be imported into draftsman drawings. This includes the standard borehole drawing view, which shows the borehole symbols used for manufacturing, as well as the borehole table, assembly view, manufacturing view, and so on.
To put a dimensioned V-cut into a panel manufacturing drawing, you can use a panel manufacturing view. This will force the V-shape to appear in isolated view while the top layer remains visible. To do this, place a manufacturing view in the Draftsman document and enable the Fab Drawing layer. This will show the V-cut line and copper in the top etched layer. It is now clear that you are viewing the panel from the top, and all V-lines are clearly marked and dimensioned.
In PCB panel manufacturing drawings, additional features need to be included, including:
Laminated drawings showing layers, thicknesses, DK values or product names and Gerber layer extensions, manufacturing instructions, detailing how the board is built and meets standards, drill tables with clearly labeled drill symbols and tolerances, title bars containing project information, company information and traceability documentation, any information about controlled impedance requirements for each layer
If you want a comprehensive view of the borehole that includes the characteristics of the PCB panel, it can be helpful to copy the dimensions and V-marks to the borehole drawing layer. This way, you can use the mechanical layer in the PCB editor to create everything for your panel making drawings.
If you prefer not to use Draftsman, or prefer to do all your design work within a unified interface, you can draw your panel fabrication directly in the PCB editor. To do this, you can apply drawing blocks, panel manufacturing notes, laminated drawings, etc., at the mechanical layer and switch these elements in the PCB to make them visible. Once complete, you can choose to export the results as an integrated DXF file. This is still common practice for many companies, and DXF exports still allow other disciplines to work in standard files containing PCB data.
Whether you need to build reliable power electronics or advanced digital systems, you can use the full PCB design capabilities and world-class CAD tools in Altium Designer. To enable collaboration in today's interdisciplinary environment, innovative companies are using Altium 365 to easily share design data and put projects into production.
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