Homebrew PCBs

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 6:39 AM, Howard Chester <howard.chester@...>wrote:

>
>
> Hello Steve, Does your PCB package Have a thermal relief setting in the
> copper fill function?
> By using this function when doing the copper fill in PCB layout helps when
> soldering by stopping the heat from your soldering iron being shunted to the
> ground plane.
> You should have various options in copper fill(also called copper pour) to
> select the thermal relief settings, eg. size, number of spokes, separate
> settings for SMD devices etc.
> If your package does not have these settings check out the free DIPTrace
> schematic and PCB package (300 pin limit) at
> http://diptrace.com
> Hope this is of some help with your current problem, chester
>

EagleCAD also allows you to enable thermal relief patterns on copper
fills/pours, and I'd highly recommend it for any homebrew work.

To enable it, get info on your fill polygon, and check the "Thermals"
checkbox.

-Andrew


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