PCB wiring plots on clear plastic

Guest
Trying to find out what they are called.
I remember doing my artwork at 4x with tape
and taking it to a guy that had a camera
the size of a large conference room to get
them reduced to scale and printed like
positives on acetate sheets for making PCBs.

What are those sheets called and can I
still get them from Gerber data?

Thanks.
 
On Tue, 10 Sep 2019 16:42:23 -0700 (PDT), alan.yeager.2013@gmail.com
wrote:

Trying to find out what they are called.
I remember doing my artwork at 4x with tape
and taking it to a guy that had a camera
the size of a large conference room to get
them reduced to scale and printed like
positives on acetate sheets for making PCBs.

What are those sheets called and can I
still get them from Gerber data?

Thanks.

The taped originals were called "mylars." The reduced photos were just
called "film."

You may want a photoplotter to turn Gerbers into film. You might
google gerber photoplot service

Or just order boards from somewhere cheap, like PCBWAY.
 
On Tuesday, September 10, 2019 at 7:54:55 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
Or just order boards from somewhere cheap, like PCBWAY.

Or someplace even cheaper (though just barely, depending), like JLC.
https://jlcpcb.com/
 
On 11/09/19 00:54, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 10 Sep 2019 16:42:23 -0700 (PDT), alan.yeager.2013@gmail.com
wrote:

Trying to find out what they are called.
I remember doing my artwork at 4x with tape
and taking it to a guy that had a camera
the size of a large conference room to get
them reduced to scale and printed like
positives on acetate sheets for making PCBs.

What are those sheets called and can I
still get them from Gerber data?

Thanks.

The taped originals were called "mylars." The reduced photos were just
called "film."

Also look for "rubylith", e.g. red/blue for double sided PCBs.


You may want a photoplotter to turn Gerbers into film. You might
google gerber photoplot service

Or just order boards from somewhere cheap, like PCBWAY.

But some people /like/ doing things the hard way :)
 
On Tuesday, September 10, 2019 at 7:42:27 PM UTC-4, alan.ye...@gmail.com wrote:
Trying to find out what they are called.
I remember doing my artwork at 4x with tape
and taking it to a guy that had a camera
the size of a large conference room to get
them reduced to scale and printed like
positives on acetate sheets for making PCBs.

What are those sheets called and can I
still get them from Gerber data?

Thanks.

The king of that stuff was Bishop Graphics. They had a system with pin-registered mylar sheets, red, blue & black tape that you'd use for solder-side, component-side and both sides artwork.They also had many pre-made footprints (in black), and a system of "puppets" which were temporary stickies (think Colorforms) to do your placement.

Many fun(!?) hours sweating over that stuff back in the day.

You are not going to make these from Gerbers, but you can get them printed on film or plotted on mylar or tracing paper.
 
On Wednesday, 11 September 2019 08:28:20 UTC+1, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 11/09/19 00:54, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 10 Sep 2019 16:42:23 -0700 (PDT), alan.yeager.2013@gmail.com
wrote:

Trying to find out what they are called.
I remember doing my artwork at 4x with tape
and taking it to a guy that had a camera
the size of a large conference room to get
them reduced to scale and printed like
positives on acetate sheets for making PCBs.

What are those sheets called and can I
still get them from Gerber data?

Thanks.

The taped originals were called "mylars." The reduced photos were just
called "film."

Also look for "rubylith", e.g. red/blue for double sided PCBs.


You may want a photoplotter to turn Gerbers into film. You might
google gerber photoplot service

Or just order boards from somewhere cheap, like PCBWAY.

But some people /like/ doing things the hard way :)

I know I moaned when we had to go from black crepe tape on acetate to software. I was practiced with tape, new to the software - and its output was lousy in comparison. If the circuit's simple & the OP knows tape well & rarely designs a pcb... hey why not. Otherwise do it in software, learn.


NT
 
On Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:24:39 -0700 (PDT), rangerssuck
<rangerssuck@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, September 10, 2019 at 7:42:27 PM UTC-4, alan.ye...@gmail.com wrote:
Trying to find out what they are called.
I remember doing my artwork at 4x with tape
and taking it to a guy that had a camera
the size of a large conference room to get
them reduced to scale and printed like
positives on acetate sheets for making PCBs.

What are those sheets called and can I
still get them from Gerber data?

Thanks.

The king of that stuff was Bishop Graphics. They had a system with pin-registered mylar sheets, red, blue & black tape that you'd use for solder-side, component-side and both sides artwork.They also had many pre-made footprints (in black), and a system of "puppets" which were temporary stickies (think Colorforms) to do your placement.

Many fun(!?) hours sweating over that stuff back in the day.

Sweat kept the tape from sticking to the mylar.

You are not going to make these from Gerbers, but you can get them printed on film or plotted on mylar or tracing paper.

The Bishop salesmen were thugs. They would hold up an order for pads
and tape, unless you agreed to buy all your blue-line supplies from
them. Silicon Valley rejoiced when CAD killed Bishop.

The Chart-Pak stuff just wasn't as good.
 
On Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:21:35 -0700 (PDT), tabbypurr@gmail.com wrote:

On Wednesday, 11 September 2019 08:28:20 UTC+1, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 11/09/19 00:54, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 10 Sep 2019 16:42:23 -0700 (PDT), alan.yeager.2013@gmail.com
wrote:

Trying to find out what they are called.
I remember doing my artwork at 4x with tape
and taking it to a guy that had a camera
the size of a large conference room to get
them reduced to scale and printed like
positives on acetate sheets for making PCBs.

What are those sheets called and can I
still get them from Gerber data?

Thanks.

The taped originals were called "mylars." The reduced photos were just
called "film."

Also look for "rubylith", e.g. red/blue for double sided PCBs.


You may want a photoplotter to turn Gerbers into film. You might
google gerber photoplot service

Or just order boards from somewhere cheap, like PCBWAY.

But some people /like/ doing things the hard way :)

I know I moaned when we had to go from black crepe tape on acetate to software. I was practiced with tape, new to the software - and its output was lousy in comparison. If the circuit's simple & the OP knows tape well & rarely designs a pcb... hey why not. Otherwise do it in software, learn.


NT

I remember two people taking two days to check a hand-taped layout.
One would call out the connections, the other would trace the artwork.
A connectivity+clearance check now takes a few seconds.

Well, I did fall in love once, with the young person working with me
to check boards. Proximity effect.

I never missed hand-taped boards. If I asked a layout person "say,
could you move that section an inch to the right?" I might get
assaulted.

NASA used to lay out boards with ink on vellum.

Does anybody remember Lorry Ray?

I kept a couple of mylar sets around here, to show to the kids.
 
As someone said, those were/are clear Mylar sheets, 10 mils thick.

Hul

alan.yeager.2013@gmail.com wrote:
Trying to find out what they are called.
I remember doing my artwork at 4x with tape
and taking it to a guy that had a camera
the size of a large conference room to get
them reduced to scale and printed like
positives on acetate sheets for making PCBs.

What are those sheets called and can I
still get them from Gerber data?

Thanks.
 
On Wednesday, 11 September 2019 19:35:21 UTC+1, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:21:35 -0700 (PDT), tabbypurr wrote:

I know I moaned when we had to go from black crepe tape on acetate to software. I was practiced with tape, new to the software - and its output was lousy in comparison. If the circuit's simple & the OP knows tape well & rarely designs a pcb... hey why not. Otherwise do it in software, learn.


NT

I remember two people taking two days to check a hand-taped layout.
One would call out the connections, the other would trace the artwork.
A connectivity+clearance check now takes a few seconds.

Well, I did fall in love once, with the young person working with me
to check boards. Proximity effect.

I never missed hand-taped boards. If I asked a layout person "say,
could you move that section an inch to the right?" I might get
assaulted.

lmao, I'd forgotten that. Complex boards were a real hazard in that respect..


> NASA used to lay out boards with ink on vellum.

I guess that would work with a uv epidiascope. Perhaps even with a lightbox if the ink were dense enough & the tracks not too narrow.

We used a photocopier to duplicate the tape layout onto larger acetate sheets, several per sheet.


Does anybody remember Lorry Ray?

I kept a couple of mylar sets around here, to show to the kids.

NT
 
On 2019-09-10, alan.yeager.2013@gmail.com <alan.yeager.2013@gmail.com> wrote:
Trying to find out what they are called.
I remember doing my artwork at 4x with tape
and taking it to a guy that had a camera
the size of a large conference room to get
them reduced to scale and printed like
positives on acetate sheets for making PCBs.

What are those sheets called and can I
still get them from Gerber data?

Rubylith(tm)

sure:

Use "gerbv" to produce a pdf, and print that as large as you want,

--
When I tried casting out nines I made a hash of it.
 
On Fri, 13 Sep 2019 06:42:44 -0000 (UTC), Jasen Betts
<jasen@xnet.co.nz> wrote:

On 2019-09-10, alan.yeager.2013@gmail.com <alan.yeager.2013@gmail.com> wrote:
Trying to find out what they are called.
I remember doing my artwork at 4x with tape
and taking it to a guy that had a camera
the size of a large conference room to get
them reduced to scale and printed like
positives on acetate sheets for making PCBs.

What are those sheets called and can I
still get them from Gerber data?

Rubylith(tm)

sure:

Use "gerbv" to produce a pdf, and print that as large as you want,

Rubylith was a red plastic film that we stuck to the mylars to make
cutout shapes, like ground or power pours. We kiss-cut it with an
x-axto knife and peeled away the unwanted bits.

Early IC designs were hand-cut from rubylith on mylar. To simplify
life, there were exactly 25 microns to the mil in Silicon Valley.
 
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:kaknne9mhnak6v0i9jkgj658894v1t5cc6@4ax.com:

Early IC designs were hand-cut from rubylith on mylar. To simplify
life, there were exactly 25 microns to the mil in Silicon Valley.

I remember the traces being rounded in the early IC layout days. No
sharp corners, even at the anular ring matings. All smooth. If we
could have had rounded edges on the traces themselves, we would have!
Little oval traces running all around... nice and quiet.
 
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 01:56:10 +0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:

John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:kaknne9mhnak6v0i9jkgj658894v1t5cc6@4ax.com:

Early IC designs were hand-cut from rubylith on mylar. To simplify
life, there were exactly 25 microns to the mil in Silicon Valley.



I remember the traces being rounded in the early IC layout days. No
sharp corners, even at the anular ring matings. All smooth. If we
could have had rounded edges on the traces themselves, we would have!
Little oval traces running all around... nice and quiet.

Some people made rounded bends with the black tape on mylars, but that
tended to creep over time. We overlapped at an angle and cut, so one
trace wound up being a bunch os segments.

It was a huge PITA. Literally a PITA, hunched over a light table for
days and weeks. Then two round-trips to Lorry Ray in Mountain View, to
drop off the mylars and pick up the film.

Documents, like manuals, were similarly inefficient. Write in
longhand, give to a secretary to type, correct that a few iterations.
 
On Saturday, 14 September 2019 03:57:46 UTC+1, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 01:56:10 +0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:kaknne9mhnak6v0i9jkgj658894v1t5cc6@4ax.com:

Early IC designs were hand-cut from rubylith on mylar. To simplify
life, there were exactly 25 microns to the mil in Silicon Valley.

I remember the traces being rounded in the early IC layout days. No
sharp corners, even at the anular ring matings. All smooth. If we
could have had rounded edges on the traces themselves, we would have!
Little oval traces running all around... nice and quiet.

Some people made rounded bends with the black tape on mylars, but that
tended to creep over time. We overlapped at an angle and cut, so one
trace wound up being a bunch os segments.

bending it round was quicker, but there wasn't always enough space. One thing I liked about acetate & crepe was that tracks could be narrowed where they had to squeeze through narrow spaces, and pads trimmed down to accommodate. Of course narrow meant enormous by today's standards.

I remember the days when even DIL pads were too close, and QIL was a thing. Lots of QIL chips got their legs pliered to fit DIL sockets later.


It was a huge PITA. Literally a PITA, hunched over a light table for
days and weeks. Then two round-trips to Lorry Ray in Mountain View, to
drop off the mylars and pick up the film.

Documents, like manuals, were similarly inefficient. Write in
longhand, give to a secretary to type, correct that a few iterations.

....get peed off with the secretary etc. With hindsight the idea that one had to get someone else to type something seems absurd.


NT
 
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 04:27:54 -0700 (PDT), tabbypurr@gmail.com wrote:

On Saturday, 14 September 2019 03:57:46 UTC+1, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 01:56:10 +0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:kaknne9mhnak6v0i9jkgj658894v1t5cc6@4ax.com:

Early IC designs were hand-cut from rubylith on mylar. To simplify
life, there were exactly 25 microns to the mil in Silicon Valley.

I remember the traces being rounded in the early IC layout days. No
sharp corners, even at the anular ring matings. All smooth. If we
could have had rounded edges on the traces themselves, we would have!
Little oval traces running all around... nice and quiet.

Some people made rounded bends with the black tape on mylars, but that
tended to creep over time. We overlapped at an angle and cut, so one
trace wound up being a bunch os segments.

bending it round was quicker, but there wasn't always enough space. One thing I liked about acetate & crepe was that tracks could be narrowed where they had to squeeze through narrow spaces, and pads trimmed down to accommodate. Of course narrow meant enormous by today's standards.

It was an accomplishment to push two traces between DIP pads. I was
never brave enough to do that. One was tricky enough.

Doing logic in FPGAs is a big improvement. Multilayer boards is
another huge improvement.

I wonder if people will still be soldering parts to PC boards 100
years from now. Probably so.

I remember the days when even DIL pads were too close, and QIL was a thing. Lots of QIL chips got their legs pliered to fit DIL sockets later.


It was a huge PITA. Literally a PITA, hunched over a light table for
days and weeks. Then two round-trips to Lorry Ray in Mountain View, to
drop off the mylars and pick up the film.

Documents, like manuals, were similarly inefficient. Write in
longhand, give to a secretary to type, correct that a few iterations.

...get peed off with the secretary etc. With hindsight the idea that one had to get someone else to type something seems absurd.

Early in the PC days, it was accepted that "you'll never get a
businessman to type." Now there are no secretaries. Good; it was
demeaning, and a huge waste of human resources, to delegate so many
women to typing and filing and licking stamps and making coffee.
 
On Saturday, 14 September 2019 16:31:59 UTC+1, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 04:27:54 -0700 (PDT), tabbypurr wrote:
On Saturday, 14 September 2019 03:57:46 UTC+1, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 01:56:10 +0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:kaknne9mhnak6v0i9jkgj658894v1t5cc6@4ax.com:

Early IC designs were hand-cut from rubylith on mylar. To simplify
life, there were exactly 25 microns to the mil in Silicon Valley.

I remember the traces being rounded in the early IC layout days. No
sharp corners, even at the anular ring matings. All smooth. If we
could have had rounded edges on the traces themselves, we would have!
Little oval traces running all around... nice and quiet.

Some people made rounded bends with the black tape on mylars, but that
tended to creep over time. We overlapped at an angle and cut, so one
trace wound up being a bunch os segments.

bending it round was quicker, but there wasn't always enough space. One thing I liked about acetate & crepe was that tracks could be narrowed where they had to squeeze through narrow spaces, and pads trimmed down to accommodate. Of course narrow meant enormous by today's standards.

It was an accomplishment to push two traces between DIP pads. I was
never brave enough to do that. One was tricky enough.

yeah :) Now I look at early 80s boards and wonder what folk were thinking leaving so much of the space bare.


Doing logic in FPGAs is a big improvement. Multilayer boards is
another huge improvement.

I wonder if people will still be soldering parts to PC boards 100
years from now. Probably so.

I'm convinced they won't. A whole appliance will be done in one silicon chip, even at the hobby scale. Silicon because it's so cheap & abundant. I doubt anything will fail to have embedded electronics.


I remember the days when even DIL pads were too close, and QIL was a thing. Lots of QIL chips got their legs pliered to fit DIL sockets later.


It was a huge PITA. Literally a PITA, hunched over a light table for
days and weeks. Then two round-trips to Lorry Ray in Mountain View, to
drop off the mylars and pick up the film.

Documents, like manuals, were similarly inefficient. Write in
longhand, give to a secretary to type, correct that a few iterations.

...get peed off with the secretary etc. With hindsight the idea that one had to get someone else to type something seems absurd.

Early in the PC days, it was accepted that "you'll never get a
businessman to type." Now there are no secretaries. Good; it was
demeaning, and a huge waste of human resources, to delegate so many
women to typing and filing and licking stamps and making coffee.

It was crazy. This attitude was even worse... how far society has come
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMuZI5kmpVU


NT
 
On Sunday, September 15, 2019 at 1:31:59 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 04:27:54 -0700 (PDT), tabbypurr@gmail.com wrote:
On Saturday, 14 September 2019 03:57:46 UTC+1, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 01:56:10 +0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:kaknne9mhnak6v0i9jkgj658894v1t5cc6@4ax.com:

<snip>

Documents, like manuals, were similarly inefficient. Write in
longhand, give to a secretary to type, correct that a few iterations.

...get peed off with the secretary etc. With hindsight the idea that one had to get someone else to type something seems absurd.

Early in the PC days, it was accepted that "you'll never get a
businessman to type." Now there are no secretaries. Good; it was
demeaning, and a huge waste of human resources, to delegate so many
women to typing and filing and licking stamps and making coffee.

They didn't just type and file and make coffee.

Good secretaries ran their boss's departments, and usually knew more about what was going on than the boss did. Being friendly and polite could pay off handsomely.

They were never paid as much as they should have been. When I was working at George Kent in Luton in the early 1970's the company had a job evaluation exercise and it showed that they ought to be paying their female staff a lot more.

So the report was re-written and the results adjusted to fit the status quo.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
 
On Sunday, September 15, 2019 at 2:04:06 AM UTC+10, tabb...@gmail.com wrote:
On Saturday, 14 September 2019 16:31:59 UTC+1, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 04:27:54 -0700 (PDT), tabbypurr wrote:
On Saturday, 14 September 2019 03:57:46 UTC+1, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 01:56:10 +0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:kaknne9mhnak6v0i9jkgj658894v1t5cc6@4ax.com:

<snip>

Doing logic in FPGAs is a big improvement. Multilayer boards is
another huge improvement.

I wonder if people will still be soldering parts to PC boards 100
years from now. Probably so.

I'm convinced they won't. A whole appliance will be done in one silicon chip, even at the hobby scale. Silicon because it's so cheap & abundant. I doubt anything will fail to have embedded electronics.

Programmable analog doesn't seem to work as well as programmable logic.

My guess is that low volume stuff with any analog circuitry in it will still get done on printed circuit boards.

Any significant power dissipation is hard to handle within a silicon chip, and those bits will have to soldered onto something that may end up looking very like a printed circuit board, though the substrates may get more exotic than we've been used to.

One board I worked on (for blanking off a low current electron beam) got switched to a polyimide substrate because it ran a bit hot - the original epoxy glass board discoloured after a year or so in the field, which worried the customers, but the polyimide didn't discolour.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
 
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 09:04:01 -0700 (PDT), tabbypurr@gmail.com wrote:

On Saturday, 14 September 2019 16:31:59 UTC+1, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 04:27:54 -0700 (PDT), tabbypurr wrote:
On Saturday, 14 September 2019 03:57:46 UTC+1, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 01:56:10 +0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:kaknne9mhnak6v0i9jkgj658894v1t5cc6@4ax.com:

Early IC designs were hand-cut from rubylith on mylar. To simplify
life, there were exactly 25 microns to the mil in Silicon Valley.

I remember the traces being rounded in the early IC layout days. No
sharp corners, even at the anular ring matings. All smooth. If we
could have had rounded edges on the traces themselves, we would have!
Little oval traces running all around... nice and quiet.

Some people made rounded bends with the black tape on mylars, but that
tended to creep over time. We overlapped at an angle and cut, so one
trace wound up being a bunch os segments.

bending it round was quicker, but there wasn't always enough space. One thing I liked about acetate & crepe was that tracks could be narrowed where they had to squeeze through narrow spaces, and pads trimmed down to accommodate. Of course narrow meant enormous by today's standards.

It was an accomplishment to push two traces between DIP pads. I was
never brave enough to do that. One was tricky enough.

yeah :) Now I look at early 80s boards and wonder what folk were thinking leaving so much of the space bare.

It's funnny to see news articles about technology. They use old stock
photos of 2-layer board full of dips and thru-hole parts.

Doing logic in FPGAs is a big improvement. Multilayer boards is
another huge improvement.

I wonder if people will still be soldering parts to PC boards 100
years from now. Probably so.

I'm convinced they won't. A whole appliance will be done in one silicon chip, even at the hobby scale. Silicon because it's so cheap & abundant. I doubt anything will fail to have embedded electronics.

Things will still need wires and stuff. You can't bolt a BGA ASIC into
a box.

I remember the days when even DIL pads were too close, and QIL was a thing. Lots of QIL chips got their legs pliered to fit DIL sockets later.


It was a huge PITA. Literally a PITA, hunched over a light table for
days and weeks. Then two round-trips to Lorry Ray in Mountain View, to
drop off the mylars and pick up the film.

Documents, like manuals, were similarly inefficient. Write in
longhand, give to a secretary to type, correct that a few iterations.

...get peed off with the secretary etc. With hindsight the idea that one had to get someone else to type something seems absurd.

Early in the PC days, it was accepted that "you'll never get a
businessman to type." Now there are no secretaries. Good; it was
demeaning, and a huge waste of human resources, to delegate so many
women to typing and filing and licking stamps and making coffee.

It was crazy. This attitude was even worse... how far society has come
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMuZI5kmpVU


NT

I just read a cool book, Code Girls.

https://www.amazon.com/Code-Girls-Untold-American-Breakers/dp/0316352543/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1ZQ6O0DBLN22G&keywords=code+girls&qid=1568565869&s=books&sprefix=code+girls%2Caps%2C198&sr=1-2

One of them would read encoded German diplomatic messages as they came
in. She had memorized the code books and could do the goofy-modulo
additives math in her head. One really cute, young, innocent looking
kid broke a major Japanese code.

A culture that restricts women is at a 50% disadvantage. At least.
 

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