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Welcome Guest! Would you like to log yourself in? Or would you prefer to create an account? Welcome to BatchPCB Rocking and rolling for over 5,000 orders and more than 13,000 individual designs! The DRC Bot is ready to take your order - use BatchPCB for your next single or multi-piece prototype PCB! We accept 2 and 4 layer designs with unlimited vias, pads and components. Minimum size is 0.5x0.5 inches and Maximum is 10x15 inches. Our prices are $2.50/sq. inch for 2 layer boards and $8.00/sq. inch for 4 layer boards. Please see the FAQ for more details. News Wednesday 25 June 2008 General Project Developments Well, the news section has been a little slow for a couple of weeks - not because there isn't any but because I just haven't had a free moment. I have been up to my ears in website code working on the new site design and coming up with ideas for new features, streamlining operations and so on. I have had to postpone a couple of planned new features (like thumbnails of uploaded files to help people figure which layer is which) but I hope to get these into the new and improved Batchpcb (Ver. 2.0 ;). There is quite a lot of work to before the new site is ready - much new infrastructure behind the scenes that should make general operations much smoother and more reliable and a very nice design that the Sparkfun design team is working on (Thanks for the efforts guys!) With a little luck we should be able to bring this all together a little later in the summer. Along with this, we are growing again - orders have really gone up in the past couple of months and turn around times are getting better. The new upload and bot system is stable and the new bot is adjusting well - I think I have ironed out most of the wrinkles. Thanks again to all of you that sent feedback and bug reports, it helps me a lot in my goal to make Batchpcb a great resource. We still need to get the word out about 4-layer boards so those can start rolling a little more quickly, but in general progress is steady and many of you have played a big part in that. Ok, back to the workbench - I hear some code calling. Until next time, its summer - have some fun! Monday 9 June 2008 Never Fear, The Bot is Back! We had a power outage for several hours here during the morning so the bot was out of commission for a while - some of you might have wondered what happened to your DRC report, but if you haven't gotten an email back yet you will soon. The bot is working his way through the backlog as I write (about noon) and should have everything cleared up in about another hour Wednesday 4 June 2008 Hey, No Drill Format Found?!? What th' .. Ah yes, this has happened, and sometimes wrongly - due to a nasty little bug in the web server that caused well tested code to fail to detect the format of drill files. Its fixed! (knock on wood) - I refactored the drill file check to not need what was broken in the server PHP so it should work now for almost all cases. However, there are a few CAD packages that fail to insert the format statement - sometimes that works, sometimes not. You can check by opening the drill file in a text editor like notepad or vim and look for the following at the top of the file: M72 or INCH - indicates inches M71 or METRIC - indicates milimeters Below this there should be some tool sizes like: T01C0.0240 T02C0.0380 ... etc. and finally a "%" character which ends the header information. After that will come the coordinates like (without the comments after): T01 (indicates the tool to use) X02349Y2988 (indicates where, a coordinate) If you get a "No Format Found" error - Do not Despair! - it might not be a problem. Check the file - if there is at least the coordinates with tool definitions like this: T01C0.0240 (inline tool definition) X02349Y2988 ( coordinate) That may work - its a gamble, but most of these will work even without the format statement. If we cannot render it it is very obvious and we will get in touch with you to try and fix it or in the worst case, cancel the order and refund your money. Tuesday 27 May 2008 International Shipping Options fixed A couple of people have pointed out that the options for shipping internationally were reduced to one (expensive) option - I apologize for this; USPS keeps (Arg!) changing its interface ... Anyway, I think I have it fixed now so that you will get the old options again - please let me know if you have any more problems. The Bot Prevails The new bot is running nicely now, merrily fetching designs and submitting them to the DRC checker - next up will be fixing up the old DRC code itself, a rewrite is in progress but it is a complex problem so that will be a little while yet. However, I did make a small change to the currently active DRC code to support smaller trace/space widths for 4 layer boards. Coming Soon: Thumbnails on file selection page! I am part way through developing some new code that will display thumbnails of the gerbers on the file selection page during submission - hopefully this will help people to select the correct files. Look for this in about a week (or sooner with luck). Thursday 22 May 2008 The Story of Bot In which we learn a great mystery .. We have a new DRC Bot! He is a little shy, so we did not announce it right away - but along with the new pre-check code there is a new bot (that's the little guy that takes designs to get a design rule check and sends you emails). The old bot retired 2 days ago and moved to Antigua and the new one got his first chance to stretch his legs a little. He was very excited and got a little over enthusiastic and got a little tangled up in the network .. this is actually good: it finally let us figure out a long standing and very mysterious network problem that we have had that caused intermittant failures, missing images, lost submissions, and so on. Fear Not! The bot will prevail!! In fact, he is working through the backlog even as I speak and has just informed me the he should be caught up in a couple of hours. So, if you submitted a design last night and are wondering if it is ok or what happened, hang in there - the bot should contact you soon. If you don't hear anything by this afternoon you can either email me, or just submit again. Tuesday 20 May 2008 New Code Update: I have just added experimental support for outline layers in case you cannot simply put the board outline in the silk layer - name the outline file *.outline eg. My_amazing_new_board_AGT_V1.outline. Since this is a new feature, be sure to include a note saying that you have an outline in the order. Tuesday 20 May 2008 New Code Update: Ok, I finally got the new pre-check code going again. I have added support for several slightly odd Gerber outputs including Pulsonix, Orcad, FreePCB, PADS and others - should fix a number of strange sizing behaviors that were evident the old pre-check code. I have also added support to the DRC for 4 layer boards with lower trace/space widths. And, there is also better support for non-standard file naming schemes. So, if you turned away before because you got funny sizes when using for example Orcad or Pulsonix or 4 layer board problems or were unable to submit files with different extension (like all *.TXT ) try us again now - I am working hard to support any Gerber output I can. All this new code is live today - again, let me know if there are any new problems and I will straighten things out for any exceptions. Bug reports and comments are welcome! Until next time, have fun and enjoy! Tuesday 13 May 2008 Website updates: I guess not many people noticed - but we do actually support 4 layer designs .. I know, the FAQ did not say this but its true. I have updated the FAQ on this and a few other points (Thanks to those that pointed it out to me ). Also, it has been asked why the minimum sizes are so large even for 4 layer boards - eh, they aren't. In fact you can use as low as 6mil trace width and spacing on 4 layer boards and 13mil drill sizes. So, let people know - BatchPCB can get your multi-layer prototypes done! Also, I have posted new testing code after adding support for some more output types and non-standard filenaming should work now, along with smarter sizing. It has also been suggested that we add support for submitting a separate board outline layer file - I am working on this and will include it in the next rev. Until then, the way to do this has been to simply make an outline in any of the layers - when we layout the boards the outermost line is what the board will be cut to. The best way to do this is to make the outline in a silkscreen (aka overlay) layer. Friday 09 May 2008 New Code Update: First, Thanks very much to all of you that have been sending feedback and bug reports - this really helps me make this system better for everyone! I got several really good bug reports with good details. Lee, Timucun, Stephan and others - I really appreciate the help. So, now I have fixed the problems from earlier in the week and added a few more touch ups - we are ready to roll again. However, it is Friday and I would rather be around to monitor things in case of problems so I am leaving the old system in place for "real" orders - proceed as usual for designs that you want to actually submit. Monday I will switch over again - but over the weekend those of you that feel like doing a little beta testing can go Here and try out submitting some designs. These will not be real submissions - they are only for testing. After this weekend I will remove all of the testing designs and if there are still no major problems (knock on wood) then I'll hook things up for normal orders. Note: The bot will not run the second stage DRC on the testing designs so you will not get an email about it. The part of the process is where the more detailed DRC happens is a separate code base - that is where the emails come from. The current rollout is the PHP pre-processing code for the website, it does some basic checks and sizing, makes an product, etc. and then sends it to the DRC box. The detailed DRC is in C++ and runs on a totally different machine - the release of that is still to come - I'll keep you posted on developments. That's all for now - thanks again for the feedback and have a great weekend! Tuesday 06 May 2008 New Code Update: I have run into a couple of bugs with the new code - so, we are rolling back to the old system temporarily. If you have ordered or uploaded in the past day and you notice any problem with an order please email me at erik AT batchpcb.com Monday 05 May 2008 Update: After a couple of false starts and wrestling with some glitches and so on, the new pre-check code is finally rolled out! New designs will go through the new system - please let me know if you have any problems with this (Thanks to those that alerted me Friday!), or suggestions about how to make it better. Til next time, Enjoy! Thursday 01 May 2008 HAPPY MAY DAY!! New developments: I am wrapping up new pre-check code for design uploads. I had to push back deploying it to address a couple of glitches, but tomorrow is the big day! Uploading should be much faster and smoother now (and things like the occasional odd sizing problem should go away ..). I haven't gotten to all the new features yet - display of images for the design on the last page is still to come, as is support for bzip2, but tar.gz compression is now supported and drill file detection is much improved - I hope that this alone will save everybody alot of headaches. Also, the general work flow is simplified - you no longer have to enter the name of your CAD software or the format of the drill file (who keeps track of that anyway?) - the new parser should pick up most drill formats - and it has a modular architecture so I can add intelligence when/if if fails to detect one. If it does fail to detect a format, you will notice as it will show " Drill Format: NoFormatFound " in the product descriptions. Let me know if that happens and I'll try to straighten it out for you. I have done quite a bit of testing with this new code - but, I'm human, so if you notice any bugs please report them to support AT batchpcb.com. Don't be shy - I like bug reports. Until next time, enjoy! Monday 14 April 2008 Its been a hectic couple of weeks - just get oriented here and figuring out how BatchPCB and the DRC Bot work is a big job. But, I've made a lot of progress on it and although it isn't quite ready to make live yet, I have rewritten the code for the website that does the initial integrity checks when you upload a design. Here is what happens: on the website, during the submission process there is code that does a couple of basic checks on the design to keep you from submitting something that will not work, confirms filenames, and then it creates an estimate of the size and cost of the board. Well, its fairly simple right now and it misses some things - like if you forgot the solder mask layer or the drill file, for instance. And, it is very particular about what format it will accept - Zip and Zip alone and files must be in the root of the zip archive. And, its a bit slow. So, among the improvements will be: Format flexibility - yes, you Open Source/*nix people will be able to submit tar gzip or bzip2! Smarter checking routines for obvious omissions Better sizing/estimate algorithms (Hopefully) a new feature - display images of the board as the DRC bot sees it .. That's the news for now - very busy, must get back to work - there are some more developments, new site design, etc ... but I will get to that later. That's called a hook I think .. Stay tuned! Monday 31 March 2008 BatchPCB is going bigtime! We have received so much demand for services that we are getting a fulltime administrator - Erik Winn (that's me) will be working on the site and the DRC bot. So, expect some new developments and improvements in the months to come. You can to write in to me at erik AT batchpcb.com with feature requests or ideas about improving the site - I can't guarantee that we can do all of them, but we will definitely take them into consideration.