To panelize, or not to panelize? That is the question...

[Starlord]

Hey guys,

I'm designing a PCB where I want rounded corners.  Typically, I just let the PCB house tile my boards and v-score them, but v-scoring won't work here because the boards aren't infinitely thin. 

I could create a rail between each board I suppose, and have them v-score on each side of the rail, but that seems kinda wasteful and I'm not sure how wide the rail would need to be.

I could also have the boards tab routed, adding some mouse bites on the tabs to make them easy to separate... except that might not play well with a prototyping service like OSHSpark which seems to forbid this, though I've seen at least one board from them which used the mouse bites.  Perhaps they just don't want people putting a hundred drill hits down the edge of the board?

Another option is to simply have the boards routed out completely.  And I'm seriously considering this option.  The edges would be perfect, and I wouldn't have to do any clean up, or snipping, or spend hours breaking apart v-scores.

I am probably going to be assembling some of these boards at home.  I may even end up doing 100 of them by hand depending on how easy this surface mount stuff is.   But I may decide to have the PCB house assemble them.  But if I do do them at home, then having one small steel stencil and being able to do one board at a time seems like a bonus. 

So I'm wondering what I should do. 

What's the downside to fully routing the boards?  Board houses seem to charge more for tab routng, but this isn't tab routing, so I don't know if there's an extra charge or not, but I don't think there is.  And I believe I spoke with Gold Phoenix a while back and they said they could handle assembly of individually outed PCBs by creating something to hold them.  I can't remember what the term for the thing was.  But I didn't ask if that cost extra.

I mean I'm sure if I'm manufacturing many thousands of boards the panelization approach is cheaper, but for a hundred at a time?  I guess being able to lay paste on 20 boards at once is a benefit, but it doesn't seem like doing them one at a time is that much more work.  Plus I'm pretty sure I'd end up getting a stencil that's only large enough for a single PCB anyway since it would be easier to manage.

Another potential benefit of fully routed PCBs is I won't have to pay for shipping all that excess material.

And I can't see myself reflowing 10-20 boards at a time which are all still attached to one another. 

So what do you think?  How would you handle this?

[Falcon69]

I would not have them routed out completely if you have multiple small boards. It is much easier to apply the solder paste using a stencil across a PCB that has multiple little circuit boards on it. Once the paste is put on, then carefully break them apart if you need to.

If I was you, if you have multiple designs, I would just panelize them yourself, and send the file in.

[nctnico]

Where I order my boards (Eurocircuits) I let them panelize my boards if necessary. Boards with round corners (or other funny shapes) are not a problem for them. I'd ask you manufacturer about panelizing the boards for you and deliver the stencils as well. It shouldn't be very expensive since they do this al lot and have most of the process automated.