Homebrew PCBs

Years ago when I was in manufacturing, we had problems with mouse bite
breakaparts causing stress on the pcb with resultant solder joint failure.

I'm now taking a new product to market, and my contract manufacturer doesn't
view this as an issue. Does anyone have any guidelines on mousebites, and
more importantly, any information on prototyping mouse bites. Its pretty
hard to do with a drill press, so I'm thinking I will need to have them run
at a board house.

Thanks
Ron

Ron,

Can you be more specific concerning mouse bites? Are you referring to 
the break tabs with small drilled holes for multi-up panels? I may be 
able to help you with some of this but it's really hard to do without 
a CNC router. Some of the single sided appliance type boards we made 
were more difficult to fabricate than multilayers due to these 
complex routing schemes. 

My experience is with Lavenir PhotoCam, Routmaster and Excellon CNC-6 
systems. I have helped several firms with front end tooling to 
eliminate many of these problems before they happen. We made all the 
mistakes in the early days and learned all of this the expensive way!
Let me know if I can help or email off list for more info.

Tom


--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "Ron Amundson" 
<ron_amundson@h...> wrote:
> Years ago when I was in manufacturing, we had problems with mouse 
bite
> breakaparts causing stress on the pcb with resultant solder joint 
failure.
> 
> I'm now taking a new product to market, and my contract 
manufacturer doesn't
> view this as an issue. Does anyone have any guidelines on 
mousebites, and
> more importantly, any information on prototyping mouse bites. Its 
pretty
> hard to do with a drill press, so I'm thinking I will need to have 
them run

> at a board house.
> 
> Thanks
> Ron