Components with rectangular leads

Making your own components and patterns, organizing and using libraries.
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jonchaps
Posts: 1
Joined: 16 Jan 2011, 16:27

Components with rectangular leads

#1 Post by jonchaps » 16 Jan 2011, 16:34

Hello,

I am working on a pattern for a power jack where the component leads require slots on the PCB rather than a round hole. I've tried to accomplish this using shapes in the pattern editor, but to make the electrical connection, a pad is required instead. Is there a way to do this with diptrace?

Thanks,
Jon

Alex
Technical Support
Posts: 3897
Joined: 13 Jun 2010, 23:43

Re: Components with rectangular leads

#2 Post by Alex » 17 Jan 2011, 02:01

We are going to add non-circular holes in the next version. Right now it is not possible, but customers on Yahoo group suggested the workaround method, see step-by-step instructions below:


Call your PCB vendor and see if they can rout a slot with a drill. Mine, Cir..West in Colorado, does it. They make use of a NC Drill command called G85.
You will have to modify your NC Drill chart by hand to reflect the slot you need.
You will have to down load a free program called View Mate by Pentalogic to view the "to be groove".

Here is a sample of what you need to do:
The skinny part of the NCdrill table is what you generate from Dip Trace.
You get to modify the line to reflect the slot you need.

X+080507Y-004230
T04
X+011500Y-027315
X+010500Y-027311
X+009500Y-027315
X+008500Y-027315
X+007500Y-027311
X+043189Y-019758G85X+043189Y-020758
X+044974Y-019828G85X+045524Y-019828
X+047309Y-019758G85X+047309Y-020758
X+050026Y-019747G85X+050026Y-020747
X+051811Y-019817G85X+052361Y-019817
X+054146Y-019747G85X+054146Y-020747
X+051586Y-022317G85X+052586Y-022317
X+044749Y-022328G85X+045749Y-022328
X+062640Y-021019G85X+062640Y-022019
X+064425Y-021089G85X+064975Y-021089
X+066760Y-021019G85X+066760Y-022019
X+068543Y-021036G85X+068543Y-022036
X+070328Y-021106G85X+070878Y-021106
X+072663Y-021036G85X+072663Y-022036
X+070103Y-023606G85X+071103Y-023606
X+064200Y-023589G85X+065200Y-023589
T05
X+021901Y-012651

What you see is the beginning location from your X/Y center, in 1/10,000: X+043189= X axis 4.3189"
The ending location is X+043189 or 4.3189...This is a vertical slot.

The Y axis:Y-019758G85= -1.9758 (to) Y-020758 or -2.0758 : vertical slot of 0.1 inch.

Now you might want to take into account the diameter of the drill: So, this drill will be longer than what we designed above by 2 times the Radius (left side and right side) or 1 diameter. So, you will have to move the starting point to the center of the starting slot point by 1 radius of the drill, and move the ending point of the slot back by 1 drill radius as well.

The hard part is finding the hole you want to rout buried in a massive table. So, to make things easier, use a unique sized tool (drill) to make the slots. That way when it comes up on the NCD table, you will see the only tool of that size...and there fore the few choices to choose from. Here I used T04 for the slot. There is a minimum size hole that a mfg can "rout" with, So, call ahead and talk to engineer.

Then when done with modifications, use View Mate to review the slot, just to make sure.

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