Can FZ slot drill?
I made the contacts rectangles and rounded the corners, but in the Gerbers there is no drill holes.
Morning Old Gray,
That is a fab house question… You could overlap multiple drill hole to make a slot, but fab houses do not like it and may leave them out or not do the board. Overlapping drill holes can break the very small drill bits. Some slots can be inserted in the board shape file and they are inserted in the router process when routing the board. Every fab house has there own specification for the minimum width of the slot. I believe OSH Park specifies 0.1" minimum width. I think some Chinese fab houses will do narrower and specified in mm. Best to check with the fab house… I seen them done… may depend on their equipment.
I was more wondering about the drill.txt file being empty, but now it looks like fab houses will have a problem.
When you export it this is all you get.
; NON-PLATED HOLES START AT T1 ; THROUGH (PLATED) HOLES START AT T100 M48 INCH % T00 M30
I was wondering if there was a special way to draw it.
It’s a 1mm slot 2mm long.
The main problem is that the pins are 1.5 x 0.8mm, so a round hole would be huge.
I can’t remember seeing a part in FZ with a slot.
Some of the parts I have with micro usb have slots for the position pins. I don’t know if they are overlapping holes or little bitty router bits that create them. I know that little holes that are too small for a drill bit are drilled with laser drills. I don’t know if slots can be cutout with lasers. The slot for micro usb are plated holes so they need to be done before the router process. There are China fab houses that will make them… I just don’t know how they are made. You could just make a hole 1.8 mm and fill it up with solder… Or maybe drill two holes close to each other and cut the center out to connect the holes when they come back from the fab house.
It’s not for me because I do it at home and it’s just 2 x 1mm holes side by side, it’s just if I post the part I want to make sure the slots are there and production houses can understand it.
I found 1 mini USB B with 5th pin broken out, with a slot that is 2 overlapping holes.
It could be… and they may do it all the time and it may work. I remember of reading a fab house website and they didn’t allow it… maybe some will do it. You are a machines and you know what happens when you try to make a long hole with a drill bit… it may drift and snap it off. Maybe in PC boards that it not a problem.