OSHPARK says there must be a 15 mil clearing between traces and outline. Shouldn’t this also affect the ground ring on our flashlight drivers? I have checked a couple of board designs from forum members and have NOT seen this clearance anywhere. Isn’t oshpark that strikt with its design rules, or did they correct the gerbers or what else?
It is hit and miss, sometimes they cut the copper back from the edge of the ground ring and sometimes not. I always have it extend to the edge and if they cut it back, so be it.
On driver that are really tight you can oversize the pcb and sand it back to make sure there is copper to the edge.
Thanks. I’’m working on a Q8 driver currently and actually there is a tight fit from tube to board, so I think I have to do oversizing and sanding.
Btw I also had a look at some of your drivers and noticed you use a clearing of only 8 mil between ground pour and other signals. Have you ever experienced faulty boards because of this or did they all work out ok? And - as far as I could see - you don’t enable thermals for your ground pour - is soldering still easily doable without thermals?
I use whatever the specs on oshpark are as the tolerances on my drivers, unless they changed recently that is. I always run the clearance test to make sure everything clears before releasing a driver. Never had an issue yet.
All my drivers are setup to be hot air reflowed, so the whole driver is heated and reflowed at once. In this case the thermal setup of the driver doesn’t effect the soldering a lot. Never tried it with an iron nor would I even try to do such a thing to be honest.
That’s good to know, thanks again.
Oshpark wrote me the solder mask should no exeed 30 mil beyond the board cutout to not make problems in the fab, TA boards are copper poured to the board outline and so far all boards I ordered over 200
the bigger ines have copper till to the edge, but the small not, not sure why
just too wide solder mask of the 46mm and 21, 22mm LDO had problems the fab removed the outer solder mask ring as they hit boards around
On one fab ground rings were not removed, but the other made problems
I’ve already read your former post (I guess in TA drivers thread) regarding this solder mask problem. Very helpful, thanks. Do I understand right: only the solder mask above the outer copper trace has been removed, and not the copper trace itself?
The copper pour on TA drivers is matched to the board outline, of course it would be possible to manually widen it over the board outline, question is if its working
for solder mask
The Gerber files contain a ring shape that was on some drivers a few mm over the board outline
in one fab that collided with boards around it so it was automatically removed on the panel, so the copper ring was there but fully covered with solder mask
I try this experiment in one fab
copper pour and solder mask expanded beyond the board outline
I like life to be predictable. So all my boards are made within OSH Park design rules. I design all my boards to be bigger diameter to make up for the copper-to-edge set-back required. Then, they are ground down to the edge of the copper pour. Some people have gotten by with designs that had copper all the way to the edge. But sometimes (maybe now it’s all the time) OSH Park will set it back themselves. In some cases, that can make the board unfit for its intended purpose.
I lost all my eagle stuff when I moved to linux
Can someone create and upload a 17mm to 20mm adapter board for the BLF 17mm driver for the new type C8 lights
Didn’t we used to have some copper adapters floating around here? I am actually in need of some of these myself. They were washers for something but can’t find them anymore.
New like the convoy c8? It works with 17mm drivers, I have a blf driver on mine without an adapter,
I found some that should work as adapters.
You can also get dedicated 17mm to 20mm driver adapter rings. I used to get mine from 3Tronics (now closed) but Googling “17mm 20mm adapter ring” produces several hits like this one from Kaidomain:
https://tinyurl.com/ybwyoxh2
(TinyURL because the Kaidomain link broke)
There are other sizes at the bottom of the page, too.
Right…we used to have some at OSHPark that would allow fitting a 17mm driver inside a 20mm ring…or I believe we did
A fellow BLF member I talk to got a new light in and I was asking for him
The problem with oshpark is that it would have very bad thermal properties and could cause the driver to overheat depending on the driver used.
Hi Gang,
I would like to have some 17mm blanks made. One with a battery positive center larger enough to fit hanks gold spring (about 11mm), but on the back side a way that I can solder a negative contact without putting wire in the way of the rim. Can someone here assist me with that?
Matt
PM sent
Hey. is there any project of the nanjg 105D driver somewhere available ??
Hello and welcome in BLF!
What do you want to make with it? What do you need?
If you want a 105D, you have to buy a 105D or 105C
Here in BLF are some similar drivers with similar Layout to the 105D which has more output channels, e.g. for some AMC7135 chips for regulated current and for a FET for unregulated maximum output.
Look at this topics for examle: