Ever had a PCB design refused?

[stevenhoneyman]

I've only just done my second (ever!) PCB layout to be manufactured properly so I'm still very new to this. Both times I've breathed a sigh of relief when I get the "Your design was accepted and will now go in to production" e-mail! I was curious - has anyone ever had a design not be accepted (for reasons other than a bad gerber file or it was 10x bigger than it should have been or something)? I wonder how much checking they do with design data for ultra cheap boards. E.g. if you used a couple of 5mil traces on a 6mil minimum, would they instantly detect this and refuse to even try and produce it?

[c4757p]

Heh, I can't add too much to the discussion because I don't actually remember what the issue was, but I have definitely had one rejected. Might have missed a layer or something.

If you violate the design rules in a way that they can still try to manufacture, they almost always will. If you use a 5mil trace on a 6mil minimum, they won't care, they'll make it anyway. Remember - the minimum is just set by the point at which the yield starts to fall. It's actually often a perfectly valid endeavor to violate this minimum on purpose and just accept the low yield. I've done it before, when I was having ten boards made and only needed one anyway. There are plenty of posts online from people who have done this intentionally to try to make use of some part, typically a BGA, that was technically impossible within the supplied specifications.

[rea5245]

At PCBShopper.com, there are several reviews of companies that mention board designs being refused. You can see them in the reviews for ITead Studios, OSH Park, PCBWay, Seeed, ShenZhen2U, and Smart Prototyping. So it does happen, and it's not uncommon.

- Bob

[mikeselectricstuff]

Eurocircuits. Every time the first go with their online DRC, sometimes even after it passed that.

[John_ITIC]

I was curious - has anyone ever had a design not be accepted (for reasons other than a bad gerber file or it was 10x bigger than it should have been or something)?

Sure, it is very easy to design things that simply cannot be manufactured. Blind vias, for instance, can only penetrate a limited number of layers down into the board. Otherwise, the aspect ratio would be wrong, causing problems with copper plating into the hole. Another example is a minimum trace width, or perhaps an invalid stackup. I have also had PCB designs be rejected by one factory because they didn't have capabilities advanced enough, forcing a change to another (more expensive) PCB house.

[Jeroen3]

I always doublechecked my gerbers using Gerbv. But when uploaded to Eurocircuits they somehow managed to merge the silkscreen with the copper layer.
How annoying, I re-generated and re-uploaded my gerbers. And they merged them again! Uploaded to the more expensive competitor, all fine...
Then I've decided, due to deadline stress, to go against policy and upload my .brd file directly.
Board went into production just fine after then. Somehow the pre-analyzer messed up my board twice.

On other occasions, we were called by the assembler house to really make sure there was a line of solder resist between two smd resistors. Some colleague didn't enable the keep-out layer with the clearance boxes on the various part of the lib. He had to redo the board all over again because all the resistors needed to be placed a few grids more apart. Alternative was a huge re-work bill.

[tszaboo]

Eurocircuits. Every time the first go with their online DRC, sometimes even after it passed that.

Yes, happens a bunch of times. I usually pick up the red telephone which directly rings at them and sort out the problem in 5 minutes.
At least I have only one PCB which was manufactured with a technical issue (on my side) over the last few years. Missing soldermask in the released zip. Doh!