Author Topic: PCB Mousebites - any recommended designs?  (Read 1079 times)

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Offline deanclaxtonTopic starter

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PCB Mousebites - any recommended designs?
« on: January 25, 2020, 09:04:51 pm »
Hi all,

I'm laying out a couple of small panels (approx 100mm x 100mm) at the moment, which will likely be produced by JLCPCB. I'm just trying to lock in the mousebite design (I'm using Altium to panelise, and have created the mousebite drill patterns as PCB footprints) and have come up with the variants in the drawing attached.

There are a  few different widths there. The mousebite holes are 0.5mm drill and spaced at 1mm centres, whilst the routing path is 2mm diameter.

Interested in your thoughts, and whether you have a recommended mousebite design that breaks away clean and easily.

Cheers,
Dean
 

Offline Alex Eisenhut

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Re: PCB Mousebites - any recommended designs?
« Reply #1 on: January 25, 2020, 10:11:36 pm »
What's the thickness of the board? Is it going into an enclosure?

1) It is important that these holes be non-plated. Copper in the hole is useless.
2) Make sure you back off any copper from the breaking area. 1mm keepout around the drills should be good. Also the snap of breaking the tabs has been known to knock 0402 and 0201 parts off the board. How close are you putting small SMT parts to the tabs?
3) I'd use the rightmost one. You will be surprised by how strong FR-4 material is, even drilled.
4) I don't know what you mean by panel, the individual boards are called "biscuits", at least in Canada. The whole bunch of boards panelized is the panel.
5) Are you including an assembly rail of some kind? Is this being sent out to be populated? Find out what they want, usually a 20mm rail is plenty and they might ask for fiducials and tooling holes (using a stencil?)
6) Are there any connectors or other thingies hanging over the edge of the board? Try to avoid placing the bites there.
7) I'd put two per 100mm side. Like I said, these things are stronger than they look and 100mm isn't big.

.. or simply ask the assembly house. I took what they prefer and put that in my library.

If your board is thinner you could also just use v-grooves.
Hoarder of 8-bit Commodore relics and 1960s Tektronix 500-series stuff. Unconventional interior decorator.
 
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