about 3 weeks ago I order a 2 Layer design, 95 square inches with the following specs:

– Yellow Solder Mask
– 2 sided While Silkscreen
– HASL free finish
– E-test included

(though not sure how much multiple designs cost)

The package came 8 days later absolutely perfect. A friend of mine used this company on at least 3 projects . . . loved what he received. They may be worth a try.

To give just one example, Sierra Proto Express is rather pricey for quantities < 3 and for small board sizes — that’s where Batch PCB is about the only decent option. But, I recently had 4 7″x4″ 4 layer boards done at Sierra. At the time, the total cost was $204 + shipping (so ~$220, ~$210 now with the new customer special). With Golden Phoenix it would cost $330 (special price).

Oh, and the Sierra boards are made in Sunnyvale.

Julian, thank you Sir!

That really clears up a lot, ever since seeing your nice rounded edge boards, I had been killing myself trying to draw one with Eagle’s line tools. Eagle’s interface is really clunky and counter-intuitive, it’s such an absolute pain to use. In this day and age, positively anachronistic.

You should post this how-to as a mini-tutorial!

For a pretty sweet free gerber viewer, I use GC-Prevue from http://www.graphicode.com/ give it a look, you’ll like it.

Yep, thanks for the comment!

So, you won’t have to mirror the bottom silkscreen layer. It should already be mirrored, effectively. If you turn everything off except that layer, everything should be reversed/mirrored, but I guess that depends on whether you put in your own text and did not mirror it.

So, the rounded board outlines are a bit of a pain in Eagle, which evidently thinks everything should be square and pointy. Eagle sucks when it comes to anything like this.

Here’s what I do. I create an outline of what I want in any vector drawing program, like OmniGraffle or Illustrator. I output that graphic as a bitmap (or DXF, I’ve done both), and then run it through this okay-but-not-great program called Eagle Power Tools that has a utility that can convert the bitmap/DXF/other-things to an Eagle script (SCR) file. I then read that script in eagle and it _painfully_ draws whatever that bitmap was on the layer I ask the script converter program to use — so, usually the dimension layer. The script converter basically turns the graphic into individual super small line segments that become the larger shape.

So, basically you have to measure up your board and draw a rounded rect of appropriate dimensions, or whatever shape you want. Then output that bitmap at a specific resolution and then also tell the bitmap to script converter to operate at that resolution (otherwise it’ll draw the shape very very small, or ginormous.) I usually have it draw it within a dummy board just to make sure it’s scaled right and such, because deleting it can be wonky, since it’s made up of zillions of tiny line segments. If it looks like it’ll properly contain my copper and everything, I’ll “group cut” it from the dummy board, and then paste it into my working board file. It usuually takes a go or two to get it right. It’s an ugly chain of stuff, but it works. I now keep hold of a few .brd files containing rounded rect outlines so I don’t have to go through this over and over again.

For complete sanity checking, I usually use a simple Gerber viewer to check my layers and see what the Gerbers actually represent and what will appear in the board. With it, you can import the individual Gerber files for each layer and double-check yourself. There’s a freebie one, after registering or something, from Pentalogix called View Mate that I use every once and again.

Great article! I really enjoyed reading it and it elaborates on many things that are not obvious regarding getting one’s own pcb fabbed. Thanks!

I have questions,

If I’m to have text on the Bottom Silkscreen (PLS), do I mirror it in Eagle before outputting the PLS gerber ?

How do you draw your rounded board outline borders to get rounder edge boards?

Would it work if you put the board outline on the Copper layers CMP/SOL?

Just tweaking my file before I send it off, I’d hate to see my boards back messed up! Thanks!

(This of Off-topic but) Do you have proof for that accusation? Wouldn’t you consider the FACT that China also have Environment control agencies to look after waste management issues (just like in US)?