Maybe if you had extra tabs at 12 and 6 oclock, more work to fit…but would really increase the area for soldering to the ground ring, much more rigidity and strenght
Wow, I’m still trying to find the bottom layer in Eagle, and you bring up truly fancy stuff here.
If you could
a) extend the 4 inner lips just so far, that a 17mm driver can be put on top instead of being soldered planar
- then you have the option to file it down to 17mm if you want it planar, but you needn’t. I second the idea for a 5th and 6th lip.
b) extend the whole piece to 26mm while keeping the vias exactly there.
then you can grind it down to any diameter between 26 and about 22.
That would be a very variable board for 17 to 20mm driver and 22 to 26mm outer diameter. PCB can be shortened with a dremel and a sanding piece in no time.
In response to your earlier comment - yeah, Eagle is the the devil. It’s super-not-intuitive. Somehow I’ve started to get used to it. I have also messed with Kicad some, it was different but not better.
I haven’t shared it…if you would like it shared let me know
Very cool having a modular type contact ring that with a little grinding can make fit multiple pills
Here is Mattaus’s CAM processor that I added the top and bottom cream layer…just put in the cam directory of Eagle install, when you get your board built save it, open the CAM processor, open the board, generate, zip up the all caps files and upload to OSHPark, you can also upload to OSHStencils and select the correct cream layer for a stencil
EDIT: You cannot just add those with tDocu/bDocu. I know some people will TLDR
Oshpark frequently cannot keep the silkscreen aligned with the rest of the board - adding thin rings is asking for misalignment. That said, there’s a bigger problem with your suggestion. You can’t silkscreen bare copper. Silkscreen is only allowed on mask, it gets automatically removed otherwise in the production process. Therefore you must manually lay down mask rings or the silkscreen generated by tDocu/bDocu will never show up in the finished product. Since the mask is a negative layer and we want to laydown a positive, it’s already a big pain to add the guide rings. If you don’t know what I’m describing there just fire up Eagle and try to make another mask ring or two at something like 23mm.
So IMO silkscreen rings just makes the board look sloppier after production and adds extra work / gets in the way inside Eagle.
right…you can’t put any silkscreen or mask where tStop and bStop are…those rings tDocu/bDocu were just added over the top of your mask rings…but as you said…alignment sucks bigtime (I don’t think the bottom layer has the rings, the bottom image showed them there…but the bottom of your .brd is all copper I believe, the top had the concentric rings of mask above
Thanks a lot. This is everything that could be hoped for. Moving the vias to the thicker regions was a good idea, this will increase stability. And the guide lines should be truly helpful. I did set up an OSH park account (only had ordered a stencil yet) and have now ordered 26mm (v11) and 22mm (v9b). More than happy I am.
I opened 26mm (v11) in Eagle and separated all parts to understand them. Two things seem weird.
The tStop layer (29) seems to be the complete opposite than in the oshpark picture. Solder mask everywhere but not in the small guide rings. Shouldn’t it be the other way round? The bottom layer is completely covered with a bStop layer as well…
Over the vias are red shaded cicles, belonging to layer 1, that are unmovable and unclickable. I can move the 26mm red cicle of layer 1, but not the 8 small ones.
I use Eagle 6.5.0 light, could that be a problem?
Thanks again.
Stop layers are negative - they define where we do NOT want solder mask applied. Generally speaking, most PCBs require solder mask everywhere with a few exceptions, so negative makes sense in a normal application.
Take a screenshot of the red shaded circles, I’m not really sure what you are running into there. Actually, most likely thing is that you ran a DRC from the Tools menu or the tool pallet. If that’s the case you must run a DRC again and this time clear all errors - those are overlap warnings.
Repeatedly right clicking may help you select the appropriate items. If I continue to right click Eagle will select things one by one through the stack under my cursor. Those circles should be easy to select though. Things get harder to select when stacked deeply. Also some items (not those circles) will require the appropriate Origins layer to be turned on, and you grab them using the little origin symbol.
Yes, that’s exactly what it was. I must have clicked there while trying to get a grasp.
Left me quite dumbfounded.
That’s very very good to know.
Thank you very much. I will stop now asking layman’s questions, you did help me more than enough.
Just got the “assigned to panel” info from OSH park, by the way.
HQ
I made a thread for the latest revision of the 26mm board here. v13 is meant to be attached to a mandrel in a drill or dremel and filed down that way before breaking out the center area.