Quickturn Now Includes Slots & Cutouts

[Molly O'Hara]

You can now select Slots and Cutouts on Quickturn orders with lead times as short as 24 hours with every PCB order, and at a lower price than ever before.
Printed Circuits Slots & Cutouts

[bpTech]

I appreciate that the ability to add slots and cutouts has been added, but I'm not sure about the best way to take advantage of this feature.
1. PCB123 seems to have no built-in slot/cutout feature though seemingly you can do it on the MECH layer and add notes to the layout. It is hard to justify the time to learn another layout tool if it takes special tweaks to get it to work that could go wrong.
2. Eagle (Cadsoft) does not allow slots, most people use adjacent holes but that violates the DRC. I think cutouts also require some special notes.
3. The version of Orcad that could do layout is long gone. My version uses Allegro PCB layout.
4. The version of Altium that is supported is 4 years old (Winter 2009) and not available to me. We have Summer 2009...
So it looks like I am back to using Gerbers with no native file support. Too bad, because the project absolutely cannot have two spins, there is no time. The chances of getting a Gerber that is perfect on the first try with a new toolchain and no helpful DRC seem pretty slim.

The question is, what is the most fool-proof way to get a run of 15 4 layer boards done with a large hole cutout in the center and corner cutouts at each corner for mounting boss clearance? I could also use some slots but can work around with large holes for this one-off prototype.

[Sal Hernandez]

We are working on slots and cutouts for PCB123 v5.

The best way to include the notches in the corners of you board is to make them part of your board outline. If they are part of your outline they are not counted as cutouts unless they require routing with a < .062" router. If you have a large hole (< .25") you can include the appropriately sized hole as part of your drill file. If you can't include the information on your drill file you can add it to the board outline layer or on a separate fabrication layer.

It really depends on the software you plan to use. If you are using PCB123 you can include the information on the mechanical layer. Remember that you can't order slots and cutouts through PCB123 yet so make sure you go to PCBexpress/Quickturn to place your order and use PCBexpress for <= 4 slot and cutouts or Full Feature for > 4.

Eagle: Include notches as part of the board outline. Overlapping drill holes are fine for slots and you can place cutouts on the dimension layer.

Allegro: No native file support at this time, but you can generate your own gerbers.

Altium: We have native file support up to version 10.

Please contact [url=http://www.sunstone.com/pcb-solutions/p ... ols/pcb123[/url].