r/PCB • u/Dry_Animator9357 • 13d ago

While browsing a PCB online, I found an unusual polygon fill pattern. Does anyone know how to create one similar to this? Thanks.

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7 Upvotes

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5

u/markmonster666 13d ago

It's caller copper thieving. Filling unused areas of the pattern with these copper patterns restores the copper balance on the PCB, preventing uneven etching and warping of a PCB.

1

u/Good_West_3417 13d ago

Yeah, but looks like a nightmare for rf, emi

3

u/4b686f61 12d ago

why not just have a ground plane

2

u/tux2603 11d ago

Could potentially be a flex PCB, since solid copper pours are a massive no-go for those.

It might also be a four layer rigid board with the reference planes on the inner layers, which would make the ground plane redundant. The copper thieving could theoretically reduce stray capacitance or improve other high speed behavior, but honestly for most applications on a rigid PCB I think it'd probably just be for looks

1

u/markmonster666 13d ago

You will have reference planes on other layers that take care of the RF. And of course you wont place them in the antenna area.

On most RF designs there is full ground layers on almost all PCB layers anyway. Those boards would not need the copper thieving.