BatchPCB Woes

[electrosonic]

I have gotten a few boards made with no issues. Populated a switching board and it didn't work. I finally figured out one trace was not continuous, not cracked,  just a hair width of copper missing - it was invisible under the solder mask. First time I have come up against this. Anyone else have this problem?

Andrew.

[amptramp]

I worked for one company in Toronto at a time when there were 45 printed circuit board manufacturers in the city and at one point, none of them were approved vendors.  One of the most common ways to be disqualified was to store bare board material on top of each other so the sharp corners could scratch the copper on the board above or below it.  We preferred to see a thin layer of paper or foam between PCB blanks.  This was a common reason for having open traces on a board.

[electrosonic]

Here's what I mean



I ended up butchering the board a bit, I had to unsoldering the pcb mount input jack (unnecessarily it turned out) to figure it out.

Oh well, I seem to learn more when things don't work then when they do.

Andrew.

[defaced]

After my recent trials with dry film (which supposedly is what the industry uses) any defect in the film or its application can cause stuff like this. I would imagine dust or hair caught between the board and the film could be another cause.  Good job finding it. That could have been a frusterating debug.

[R O Tiree]

...I would imagine dust or hair caught between the board and the film could be another cause...

I have 6 cats... trying to make sure that my artwork is fur-free before exposing the board is a nightmare You only have to look at an acetate sheet funny and it will pick up a static charge... and the cat-fluff inevitably follows within nano-seconds.

[deadastronaut]

^ 6...

i have 1 and that's bad enough for flying fluff!!..usually ends up in laquer..

[Gurner]

I have 6 cats... trying to make sure that my artwork is fur-free before exposing the board is a nightmare You only have to look at an acetate sheet funny and it will pick up a static charge... and the cat-fluff inevitably follows within nano-seconds.

BatchPCB keep cats?   

[electrosonic]

I don't mean to slag BatchPCB, when you order a couple of boards they send you four. I paid for 2 boards and got three good ones and one bad one - so in that sense they gave me more than I paid for. I just now know to spend a couple of minutes checking over a board before I populate it.

Andrew.