Electrical Engineering & Electronics Design

I have been helping an engineer with this problem using Flatcam software.

He is milling his own prototype PCB's on a milling machine.

The problem is he is importing gerber file in to Flatcam and all is fine but when he is imporing the Excellon drill file the holes are not matching the gerber files copper tracks.

The mistake he was making is he was not matching the format resoloution: For instance 4:3.

The Excellon drill file must exactly match the gerber file format resoloution. This must also be set to 4:3. If you dont match the resoloution the files will be outputted at different sizes.

Many people online seem to be having the same issue or problem.

The format resoloution can be confusing. For a format resoloution of 1:1 this would be 0.0 For a format resoloution of 2:3 this would be 00.000. for a format resoloution of 4:3 this would be 0000.000.

If you are designing a circuit with traces 0.016 mm you will need to choose a resoloution 1:3 or over for instance. In Altium 20.0 you would pick the 4:3 resoloution. In Altium 20.0 his is the closest resoloution.

Exporting fabrication files from PCB design software is far more complicated with professional level software such as Altium among others.

Output setting must be matched to suit the Fabrication house making your PCB's or the software you are exporting to.

Good luck with your designing regards Jason