Get your PCBs printed with PCBWay
We
have already designed a PCB for a micro robot in my previous blog post. However, if you
are not familiar with PCB designing, you can follow the previous post from this link. Within this post we are going to discuss about the procedure to get printed your designed PCB
from an online PCB manufacturer. For that, I selected one of the leading PCB
manufacturers in world called PCBWay. You can use any PCB drawing without errors
to follow the procedure which I am going to explain within this post.
At
the moment you need to have a completely routed PCB drawing. Here I am using the PCB drawing which I already completed for a general purpose small robot using
Altium designer 16.0 software. If you would like to take a look at that PCB you
can follow this link.
Generating
Gerber Files and Drill Drawings
First
of all, you need to generate several files called Gerber files which contains the extract of your PCB design in an understandable format for computers. The Gerber format is an open ASCII vector format specially used for printed circuit board designs. It is the a standard used by PCB industry software to describe the printed circuit board images with different layers such as copper layers, solder mask, legend, drill data, etc. Now we are going to generate that Gerber files from the PCB drawing using the same
CAD software you used to complete your design. In my case I am using Altium. In the Altium user interface, go the projects
tab which contains the project files and select your PCB design ( .PcbDoc file).
Then go through following route from the top sub menus.
Files àFabrication Outputs à Gerber Files
Files àFabrication Outputs à Gerber Files
This will open up a new window with several tabs to customize the resulting Gerber files. There you need to edit some of the fields as the following steps, in order to get the PCB printed perfectly. Please note that these setting may differ according to your design.
- General à Units :inches , Format:
2:5
- Layers à In layers to plot tab, select all the layers
you want to get printed. (I have attached my layers)
- Apertures à Make sure the Embedded Aperture is set to
RS274X
- Advanced à
Set advanced settings according to your preferences. (I have attached my
settings)
 |
| Configuration settings for Gerber file generation |
After
completing the settings, click 'okay' button and it will generate a CAM drawing
for the manufacturing process including all the routing details, texts, pads
and other data in a single file.
Next
you need to generate a drill drawing data file called NC Drill File, following
a similar procedure to the previous one. Go through the following route from the top
sub menus.
Files
àFabrication Outputs à NC
Drill Files
There you will get a same type
of window to enter several settings. Most of the time, default settings will
work fine for your project. Here is the screen shot of my settings window.
Then click okay button.
It will generate another CAM file only including all the drill hole data as the
following image.
Make sure to save both the Gerber
file and the NC drill file in the Project outputs folder of your work-space
folder. There you will see some other files inside this project outputs folder.
Next you need to add all these files inside this folder in to a .zip or .rar archive.
Online Instant Quoting
Now
we can start online procedure with our manufacturer. Before sending the PCB
design to them, we need to have some kind of knowledge about the prices and
what are the available customization fields they have. As I mentioned at the
beginning of the post, we are selecting PCBWay as our manufacturer. Therefore,
we need to go to their web site. They have some handy tools to generate a rough
quotation according to some user prefer options. Go to the following link to
start online instant quoting.
There
you can enter the size of the PCB, color of the top mask, thickness of the
board, number of pieces, plating details and etc. After entering all the details,
you can easily generate a quotation for your PCB with the shipping cost.
Place an Order
Just
after you got an instant quote, you can move on to the Gerber files uploading
section which is the starting process for your order placement. For that you need to create an account
from the Sign in option at the top corner of the site. After successfully signed
in and logged in to PCBWay site, you can start the following steps. Go back to
instant quote page and click on the ‘Add to Cart’ button at the bottom of the
instant quote results.
There
a new window will open up and ask you to upload Gerber files. Other than the Gerber
format, you can upload some other file types also if you are using a different
CAD software than the Altium. You need to add the zipped project output folder
of your PCB project which contains Gerber (RS-274-X) file and NC drill files to
that window.
Online Gerber Viewer
After
you have uploaded your Gerber files, you can check whether everything is correct
or is there anything to be changed using an Online Gerber viewer tool from
PCBWay site by following link or directly clicking the Gerber viewer button on
the Gerber uploading window.
After
adding and inspecting your Gerber files, you can Submit your order. This will
take a while to confirm and start processing your order. Their Engineering team
will inspect your Gerber files to find whether there are errors or something
need to be clarified. If there are no errors, they will start manufacturing
process and sending continuous status updates of the whole printing process to
your account in PCBWay.
If
you would like to see how actually this wonderful PCB manufacturing process is
happening, you can watch following video which I found in the YouTube.
Reasons for Selecting PCBWay
Since
we have discussed how to build a PCB successfully and what is the procedure to
follow in order to get your PCB printed, now it's the time look why do we actually
recommend PCBWay for this task.
High
quality service and best raw materials are two major factors we can consider.
They have a large set of professionals to inspect each and every customer’s
order according to newest technology available. Let's consider some valuable factors other than above two.
Real-time Progress
Tracking
Just
after you submit your order by uploading Gerber files and completing the order,
you will see a timeline for your PCB manufacturing process. If you are interested
in knowing what is your PCB's current status, this will give an ideal solution for
you. They can take several hours to 24 hours in order to complete your order
according to your request. My PCB got completed within 24Hrs and after that
they issued me the tracking number of the shipping package. It makes easier to
monitor shipping process.
PCB Assembly
Other
than the PCB manufacturing service, they have a well-recognized PCB assembly
service also. If you need to get soldered a bulk of PCBs rather than one or two
prototypes, it’s really efficient to follow this service which is a time saving
cheaper option for you. There are both SMT & THT assembly, starting from
only $30 with a precise inspection and with free stencil. Other than that, they
are providing worldwide free shipping for the assembling customers. The
components can be sourced and provided by them, or by clients themselves.
There also you can find an online quotation generator tool from
their site.
Layout and Design Service
This
is another valuable service providing by the PCBWay. Let’s say you don’t have
an expertise on designing a PCB or it’s difficult to attain the targeted requirements on designing an PCB for a particular project of yours. Then, this design service
providing by the professional engineers is the ideal solution for you.
Open source Community
When you going through
this rough ride on the electronics designing journey you may need to associate with
so many new technologies, methods and new problems which you may need the help
of leading experts on this field. The PCBWay open source community has opened the
door for you to get that expertise through the best professional in the world. Sharing
each other’s project experience and assistance in your projects may help you to
implement a successful project.
Other than this, they are doing a community service to help
students who are doing projects related to any kind of PCB designs to take
their projects to the highest level of success. As an example they sponsored us
in our final year project of the university, by supplying PCBs to
complete the project with flying colors.
Student sponsorship , shared PCB projects and so
on. - https://www.pcbway.com/
