Panelization options

[Mark]

It’d be great to be able to put solder paste down on multiple panelized boards at once. I have a few small designs where I can fit multiple boards on the tray at once. I’d imagine you’d align the probe on one board then tell the printer how many there are in the panel. You’d then have to tell it the offset (either by aligning the probe on another board or giving it dimensions - ideally both as options). Maybe you could just align to two outer pads and let the printer work out placement based on the dimensions it knows that a single board is?

[cborn]

Easy enough if you panelize the Gerbers before sending them off to have the boards made, but I guess you had the PCB house do the panelizing for you? In that case you would have to figure out any offsets the board house had made to duplicate what they had done, and I think it would be just as easy to do that yourself at the Gerber level rather that at the Voltera?

In my case I have panelized boards I would like to paste all at once in the V-One, as that would save a lot of time aligning each one, however I would then have to separate them after loading and reflow (or after paste but prior to loading) and as I separate them on a guillotine that isn’t going to work for me!

[Mark]

A very good point! Yes, the fab house panelizes them for me so I’d have to recreate them. Could probably get the top and bottom layer files off them for measurements. Luckily they panelize them with small tabs and route the rest of the outline so I just snip them out!

[troy]

I was also thinking it would be best to panelize before loading into the V-One app.

@cborn Thanks for answering mark’s question. could you elaborate on why separating pasted (or populated) boards with a guillotine would not work. I have some ideas, but knowing is better than guessing.

@mark how did you plan to depanelize? what options do you have?

I assume some (but not all) design tools offer a panelizing option either in the designer or in their gerber viewer. There’s also tools specifically for this purpose according to this:

How to panelize gerber files?

I’d be interest in your opinions of existing panelizing options. If adding panelizing options to the V-One app would offer a worthwhile improvement for people then I’d like to know what’s bad about current approaches and what we’d need to provide. Then i can generate a solid feature request.

[cborn]

Thanks for answering mark’s question. could you elaborate on why separating pasted (or populated) boards with a guillotine would not work. I have some ideas, but knowing is better than guessing.

When the blade comes down it will crush any components or splatter any paste underneath the blade. In my guillotine the blade is around 11mm wide, the sliding frame it attaches to extends much further back and only has a few mm clearance.

[cborn]

I’d be interest in your opinions of existing panelizing options. If adding panelizing options to the V-One app would offer a worthwhile improvement for people then I’d like to know what’s bad about current approaches and what we’d need to provide.

The last lot of shop-fabbed boards I panelized were too large for my free Eagle, so I imported the design to DesignSpark which has simple panelization built in. I’ve done smaller boards using the panelize.ulp in Eagle, it was a bit messy though.

Using my own software on my Modela MDX-20 mill I take the Eagle mill/drill/route CAM output and allow for simple panelization as an array (number in x, number in y, x offset, y offset) with visual display, and just add the origin offsets to the output in a loop, pretty simple to do.

However looking around I’ve just found what looks to be a highly regarded and flexible open source Gerber panelization suite http://blog.thisisnotrocketscience.nl/projects/pcb-panelizer/

Source is on Github here: https://github.com/ThisIsNotRocketScience/GerberTools

I plan to give it a try when the need next arises.

[Mark]

I tend not to panelize myself as the fab shop I use fits the boards into spaces that are spare. It’s a prototyping service (I don’t end up running huge numbers of boards). They produce large numbers of boards for bigger customers and fit any small runs into any gaps in the panels. This keeps the costs down (and minimises waste). But due to that, I never know what space there will be so I just send in a single board and they panelize as they require to get me the right number of PCB’s out.
As for depanelizing them, I can use side cutters and then file down the tabs.

[troy]

I’d give the tool cborn linked to a shot. if you do let us know how that goes.

For depanelizing, I have some ideas:

• drill some guide holes then side cut. Careful of the dust, glass particles are bad for your respiratory system
• score the surface with a utility knife (repeatedly) then fold the board. I’ve seen this work in another context, with much thinner, pre-scored boards, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. hard part will be keeping the cut straight in the first pass, but it you use light cuts (not deep ones), it should work.