Mouse bite dimensions

[fabiodl]

I made some small boards (7mm x 8mm) and connected then with mouse bytes, hole diameter 0.4mm hole distance 1mm but they they are hard to snap. What  dimensions do you usually use? If it matters I use il jlcpcb with anything set as default.

[MarkR42]

I use 0.8mm diameter 1.2mm spacing.

But I also choose 1mm thick boards instead of the standard 1.6mm, they are less robust and easier to snap.

jlc won't assemble very tiny boards (presumably they are too small for their pnp machines) so you need to panelise them or at least add edge rails.

[fabiodl]

thank you for the suggestions. next time I make something I'll give a try to 0.8 - 1.2!

[fabiodl]

By the way, by spacing of 1.2 do you mean that the distance from the center of one hole to the center of the next hole is 1.2 or that the board between the holes is 0.8 (and thus  the distance between the center of two consecutive holes is 2)?

[MarkR42]

I mean the pitch of the holes, distance from one centre to the next.

Also I noticed that one of my panels got its mousebites re-done by jlc during design review, with much smaller ones, I think they're using about 0.8mm pitch.

As far as I can tell, from ordering various boards, most mousebite setups do work quite well, you can tweak it but it seems not very critical. As long as there is still some board holding together, I have mostly been quite surprised about how difficult they are to snap even with 75% of the board missing. I've mostly been using thinner boards (1mm).

[fabiodl]

Indeed, I previously got surprised as well at how strong they are (in my case thickness 1.6, d=0.4mm p=1mm)
This time I have several different designs, which I planned to place on the same pcb.
I  however noticed that with jlcpcb it makes no sense.
Let's say you have 2 40x40mm boards.
If you order them separately you spend 2x4=8$
If you join them (and you set different design=2)you spend 9.4$
This is true for bigger boards / more designs as well
3 80x110 boards= 3x75=22$
one 240x110 board with 3 designs is 22.7$

[MarkR42]

I think JLC are trying to discourage people from panelising different designs, because it creates extra work for them when preparing the data for their machines. They have a workflow for small boards being put on panels, if you panel your own stuff, it potentially breaks their system.

I've used paneled designs for very tiny boards which are too small for their assembly, or where I want to prototype the panels for future assembly runs.

[tszaboo]

For very small boards, it is usually better to have v-scoring on two sides. So mill out two sides along X and V score along Y. Support the PCB when depanelizing, avoid big ceramic parts.