You might want an unplated hole when you need a hole to be of a better precision. For instance, my PCB manufactureres offer +/-0.1mm diameter tolerance for plated through holes, but they can offer +/-0.05mm diameter tolerance for unplated through holes. This comes from the fact that it is a little more difficult to control the thickness of the metal inside the hole. Bear in mind that this is just an example. There can be countless reasons for which you might want a hole not to be plated. Cristian
--- On Thu, 6/4/09, Alain M. <[email protected]> wrote: From: Alain M. <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kicad-users] Re: Unplated hole in module editor To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, June 4, 2009, 6:07 PM Hi, this thread seems interesting, but... When do you realy need a hole *not* to be plated? Specialy it that will be an extra manufacturing cost (you may negociate and not be billed, but the cost is there) What I usualy do, and manufacturers understand is this: the pad *and* the hole with the same size. This is usefull just in case where there may be doubt, and may otherwyse thing that I made a mistake. This usualy result in a hole that *is* metalized, but has no copper around it. Sometimes for mechanical reasons I can even make it just a little bigger just because it will be more rigid so a plastic fixture may need the extra space. I am interesting in some feedback :) Alain dennevi escreveu: > Hi again > > Your exactly right Pedro. The problem is that there's no good way of telling > the pcb-maker. You can give him additional information in a comments layer or > in some instruction, but it would be great if this were automatic. > > Some PCB applications has the ability of generating two separate drill-files > with plated and unplated holes. This would save a lot of manual work and > confusion. As you say, when all the holes are in the same drill-file it's > very hard to tell the difference. > > But I'm not complaining! I love the application and I very much appreciate > the huge work that has been done in the last year! > > Yours > Albin, Sweden ------------------------------------ Please read the Kicad FAQ in the group files section before posting your question. Please post your bug reports here. They will be picked up by the creator of Kicad. Please visit http://www.kicadlib.org for details of how to contribute your symbols/modules to the kicad library. For building Kicad from source and other development questions visit the kicad-devel group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kicad-develYahoo! Groups Links
