> Back to the original question: I'm not sure how to do a non-gerber board
> inexpensively. If the artwork is in a pdf file (or even a tif from a
> scan), you would need to find a board house that could use it, but none
> come to mind.
Olimex (in Bulgaria) claims to accept them, but I don't think you would get
any holes drilled.
I just tried to convert a PDF file to Gerber by going to a BMP file and then
converting that to an Eagle CAD script file, but it eventually failed
because Eagle couldn't handle the number of rectangles that the simplistic
converter generated. In principle it could work, if the converter made
bigger rectangles than one per source pixel.
LEADtools supports Gerber format as output in their libraries, so any of
their tools might work. For example, ePrint
(
http://www.leadtools.com/Utilities/PrinterDriver/eprint_printer_driver.htm)
is a generic Windows printer driver that has Gerber in its output format
list.
None of these work very well, though, because they're a lot of work and you
don't have a drill file. I think in the end the only real solution is to
get a Gerber file somehow, even if you have to re-enter the design in your
CAD software. Toner transfer, iron-on and CNC milling all take far too much
work for not particularly good results.
Received on Thu Nov 21 2002 - 07:50:01 GMT