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Re: gEDA-user: postscript board fab artwork



I do homebrew image transfer boards with gschem and pcb.  15 mil trace expands to
about 20 mil under heat and pressure. 1/4 oz boards are great for etch time but the
underlying glass fabric causes visible waves in the transfered toner.

George

On Wed, 2006-07-19 at 22:10 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote:
http://www.delorie.com/pcb/

Read the section on "PS bloat setting".  I have a sample .pcb to use
to calibrate it for the smallest traces.

> 1.  Has anyone made their own positives or negatives or direct toner
> transfer boards with postscript to etch better than 10 mil traces?
> If so, please tell us more.

My laserjet is good to about 5 mils, at least for the printing part.
Below that, the fuzzy edges (from the toner, not the printer) seem to
be "big" compared to the traces.

I think one of the tricks is to find 1/2 or 1/4 oz clad boards,
instead of the common 1 oz clad.

> 2.  what is a good converting program from gerber to postscript?

Er, pcb?  Just export postscript; that's what it's for.  Don't even
bother with gerbers.

> 3.  Does the pcb postscript output dialog have choices to tweak X, Y
> scales independently as well as apply bloat and shrink, or should I
> be planning on some postscript post processing?

Not yet.  The API has a hook for it, but nothing supports it yet.
Should be easy enough to tweak the .c sources to put the scale where
you need it.

> 4.  Panelizing layouts...  Chris Emerson mentioned there is
> something in PCB already -- pointers?

Cut and paste, nothing else.


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