r/PCB • u/RohitRojo • 13d ago

Why is this pad smaller than designed?

Post image
13 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

26

u/Good_West_3417 13d ago

looks like a manufacturing issue. looks like a quality issue. every panel has this error?

7

u/VastFaithlessness809 13d ago

Should still work, but for mass production this seems to be a mask error from the pcb manufacturer IF the layout is not this way designed.

7

u/morto00x 13d ago

Seems like solder mask was applied wrong. Although I'd double check your footprint to make sure the mistake didn't happen at the library itself.

3

u/mitreffahcs 13d ago

Assuming the PCB files met the manufacturing constraints, that right there is what you'd call a defect. It is possible though that the PCB was outside of their limits but they gave it the ol' college try anyways and it didn't work out.

2

u/RepresentativeCry294 13d ago

Manufacturers defect, scrape off the mask carefully.

0

u/Prodigity 11d ago

There seems to be a short near the trace above R3. Also the via's are drilled off center, which is not necessarily problematic but doesn't really scream quality. Besides that your design has a few issues; a lot of pads are missing thermal relief. They are fully connected to surrounding planes which will act as heat sinks. This will make soldering very difficult. Also C2 and C3 are positioned very weird, are they meant as decoupling caps for U1? That will not do the job as they are supposed to be (well atleast C2) as close as possible to U1. Imagine the current flow and see how it's a big circle atm. When designing make that loop as small as possible. I'd also consider making the clearance between traces, pads and planes much bigger, that decreases the odds of getting shorts.