Newbie Easytrax Questions

[Paul Slocum]

I'm trying to get my first board made this week. Couple of questions:

1) Which files do I submit to the board shop? I'm just doing a bare
bones 2-layer board (no solder mask or silk screen). My understanding
is that I submit a gerber file for each layer, a match file for the
aperatures, and a drill file. Is this correct?

2) On one of my boards I want to power a small neon lamp from 120V AC
(1.5 mA). Roughly how big do the tracks/vias need to be for this?

thanks in advance for any help
-paul

 

[Leon Heller]

I'm trying to get my first board made this week. Couple of questions:

1) Which files do I submit to the board shop? I'm just doing a bare
bones 2-layer board (no solder mask or silk screen). My understanding
is that I submit a gerber file for each layer, a match file for the
aperatures, and a drill file. Is this correct?

That's right. The software I use (Pulsonix) generates RS-274-X Gerber files
which include the aperture data. Most modern packages do the same.

2) On one of my boards I want to power a small neon lamp from 120V AC
(1.5 mA). Roughly how big do the tracks/vias need to be for this?

1.5 mA is a negligible amount of current, 8 mils or more should be fine. You
need adequate separation of the tracks, which is more important.

Leon

 

[Paul Slocum]

Awesome, thanks for the info.


....and to restore my usenet helpfulness karma, since I've mostly been
asking questions lately instead of answering:

I was having trouble with Easyplot running out of memory while loading a
PCB, and Windows XP didn't seem to be able to emulate EMS memory
properly. I found that Easyplot runs great under the Dosbox emulator
with EMS, and I was able to load my big PCB with no problem.

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net

-paul