At 02:39 PM 29/06/01 +1000, you wrote:
>Reading through the proteledaforum mailing list the past few days it has
>come to my attention that most people supply gerber files to their PCB
>manufacturer. This came as a bit of a surprise as I (and all other designers
>at our company) have always supplied the PCB file to our manufacturer and
>let them generate the gerber files. I thought this was how most people did
>it.
>We never get calls to explain details and have had no incorrect PCBs
>supplied, except for one occasion where 1.6mm thick stock was used instead
>of 0.8mm, this was clearly specified on our order/quote, and was therefore
>corrected at their expense.
>So my question is why do it? What are the advantages of sending gerber as
>opposed to PCB files?
>
>Tom.
>
>---------------------------------------
>Powercom Consultants Pty Ltd
You will get a number of people telling you it is a "Bad Idea to send PCB
files - you should send the gerbers". Take what they say with a grain of
salt as the situation here in Oz is noticeably different from elsewhere.
Sending PCB files in Protel format is, as said by others, peculiarly
Australian. At least the prevalence of the practice. Almost all the board
houses in Oz have Protel, use it a lot, and are very practiced at dealing
with it and even overcoming (more so in the past) the classic Protel gerber
bugs - who else recalls using the Precision Graphics D03Fix.exe program?
I usually send PCB files (extracted from a DDB) to Oz pcb makers - but any
volume boards that will likely be made OS are supplied in gerber.
I personally have had more bad boards made from (correct) gerbers (about 5
in 10 years) than from Protel PCB files (0 in 10 years). Since I send out
many more PCB files than gerbers the stats are even more telling. That
said I only send PCB files to those makers I trust.
Ian
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