Hi Christian,
I have never heard of a professional PC layout package that
didn't use Gerber RS274X, or D, as its standard output. It has
been more than 15 years since I have used a PC board house that
didn't expect Gerber RS-274X, or D, as its preferred input. Prior
to that, they wanted 1-to-1 film overlays. I have been making PCB's
for more than 20 years (back then, a Gerber photoplotter was really a
photoplotter!).
Certainly there are other formats available, but for the US,
market, Gerber RS274X is the standard for the board files,
and Excellon is the standard for the drill files.
If you are going to add Gerber to your package, and I think
that you must, download gerbv, and look at its gerber file
translation routines. The RS274X standard was written by idiots,
and as such has lots of room for conflicting interpretations.
The gerbv (a gnu project) programmers have done an excellent
job of making a universal parser for RS274X. It works on everything
that is out there.
G-Codes are only used for general purpose machine tools, such
as milling machines, lathes and punches.
A large number of the PCB mills and Vinyl cutters use a variant
of HPGL as their driver language. Some use 1/1000th inch as their
minimum step size, some follow the HP standard and use 1/1016th inch.
Some of the older PCB mills that use HPGL will get totally hosed
if you send more than 256 characters without a CRLF, so commands
like:
PDxxxx,yyyy,xxxx,yyyy,xxxx,yyyy,xxxx,yyyy,xxxx,yyy y,.......;
That extend for more than 256 characters without a ";" and
CRLF will crash the mill. It is always ok to send them out as:
PDxxxx,yyyy;
PDxxxx,yyyy;
PDxxxx,yyyy;
....
PDxxxx,yyyy;
Some of the older PCB mills will get totally hosed if you send
decimals in the inch mode:
PUxxxx.0123456789,yyyy.0123456789;
How do I know this? I have an old IBC-912, and it is one of
those mills.
I will look at your package. It sounds pretty good, but I have
a feeling that it is not yet ready for prime time.
Thanks,
-Chuck Harris
Christian Zinner wrote:
Hi!
"Chuck Harris" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
Hi Christian,
I looked over the information on your website, and as near as I can
tell, your tool doesn't take Gerber RS274X files as its input. Is
this true?
It can take Gerber as input for drill import, but currently not for the
conduction tracks. As I see from some other feedback, I decide to add this
functionality very soon. I personally prefer postscript. Are there still so
many pcb layout programs out there that rely on gerber only?
Does your program automatically figure out the milling paths, or is
this done manually?
This is done automatically with the opportunity to define a set of up to 4
different engraver diameters which has the andvantage that the smallest
(=slowest, most expensive and least enduring) engraving tools are only used
where it is necessary. Some other neat features let you either remove any
surplus copper or widen the isolation gaps what makes soldering a lot
easier.
It should be mentioned that the drills were automatically extracted from the
pdf, too, including a useful suggestion for the drill diameters, although
the source image's drills were only intended as an aid for manual drilling.
Does your HPGL output format allow for use on machines that define
one step as 1/1000th inch, rather than 1/1016th inch?
This is user definable. G-Code format is heavily user adjustable, too.
Also, as near as I can tell, your demo won't allow any milling to be
done at all. I cannot tell anything about your output translation
accuracy unless I can mill.
You can export drill data with the demo, and if you use the 'emulate drills
with cutter' functionality, you can export milling paths for such drills,
too.
If you take the program seriously into account, you can send me a project
file that you prepared with the demo and I will provide you with the output
of the full version.
Best regards,
--
Christian Zinner
Vienna, Austria
Email:
Web: http://www.PlatinCnc.com
Christian Zinner wrote:
Hello there!
Maybe it's not the solution that helps you by now, but if anyone is
interested in doing pcb rapid prototyping with isolation engraving,
these
screenshots may be quite impressive:
http://www.platincnc.com/temp/example.htm
I created a complete CAM dataset for drilling, isolation engraving and
contour milling of your pcb layout (I took it from the link posted by
Spehro
Pefhany) with my application. It took me less than 15min, without
employing
any other image manipulation program.