greetings, all:

Our Company has a practice of ordering sets of 7 mil silver Mylar film for
each new design, to check the actual layer images and to archive. We are
designers and builders of circuit assemblies, and buy all boards externally
from the same old large domestic board suppliers...you know who you are ;-)

Of course, said film is not used for fabrication these days, but this all
dates back to the days when it _was_ forwarded to the fab shop. It
basically gets shoved into a drawer to collect the fingerprints of those of
us flux stained wretches have to stuff 'em the next decade or so.

We have the film plotted by a local service at a moderate cost, but it
usually takes 24 hrs to get it. Sometimes, we find some minor issue which
requires correcting the CAD (Allegro) files, re-sending the Gerber to the
plotting service, and waiting for the checkfilm to "sign off" the design.
The laser photoplots also have an annoying habit of getting some bizarre
D-code in the aperture list, and needing to be re-shot.

My interest is in getting a moderately priced plotter capable of running up
to say "B" sized checkfilm with enough resolution for close inspection, but
not necessarily with the resolution and accuracy required for working film.
If such a piece of equipment could be justified, we would like to be able
to make checkplots "inhouse". I'd guess we order about 40-60 sets of film a
year.

The film would only need to be good enough to verify the clearances and
dimensions, and accurate layer-layer for checking our stackups.

If anyone has a suggestion as to the software and hardware one could use
for this purpose, please post here or email. I really have no idea what has
happened to the prices of plotters in the last 10 years...


Thanks,


Jerry Cupples
Interphase Corporation
Dallas, TX USA
http://www.iphase.com


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