JLCPCB Fails with Buggy Gerber Rendering - Resolved

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mediatechnology
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JLCPCB Fails with Buggy Gerber Rendering - Resolved

Post by mediatechnology »

I decided to give JLCPCB a try and ordered 5 different board types.
Out of the 5 boards ordered 2 have a bottom copper layer that is nowhere near the file submitted.
Those two .zip files render perfectly in 7 different Gerber Viewers and I've had boards made with them elsewhere without issue.

JLCPCB is still trying to blame my layout.
The boards that I've gotten so far without the issue look super-great but I'm close to never using them again.
They keep telling me to correct the layout but I find it impossible to get them to understand it's their Gerber import breaking it.
I can't fix what they break after I send it to them and I'm finding them to be incredibly dense when it comes to understanding the problem.

Never, never, never had this kind of problem with ExpressPCB.
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georgeonthenet
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Re: JLCPCB Fail

Post by georgeonthenet »

I started using ExpressPCB in 2007 and I'm still impressed with the product. They annoyed me with strange decisions regarding software and ordering a few years back but they backed off on not allowing the cost to be estimated without entering a credit card and cutting us off from the old simple version of the software etc.

These days I use them for prototyping complex SMD boards that have hundreds of tiny components and lots of 0.006" conductors and I'm quite impressed with what gets delivered to my door in about 5 or 6 days. In 16 years of using them they short circuited one of my connections. That was only thing I could ever blame them for. Pretty incredible.
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mediatechnology
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JLCPCB Fail - Gerber Import Buggy

Post by mediatechnology »

Here's one example of how messed up JLCPCB's Gerber import is.

I will say the the boards that they did get right look to be top-notch I simply no longer trust the process.

Gerber Viewer:
Image

GerberLogix:
Image

Seed Studio:
Image

Oshpark:
Image

Ucamco Gerber Reference Viewer:
Image
The Ucamco Gerber Reference Viewer has a syntax checker which finds no errors.

Open source TraceSpace:
Image
Where is the bottom keep-out area?

JLCPCB:
Image
The JLC Gerber import is about as fucked-up as you can get. It's interpreting line commands as arcs.

I've raised two board complaint issues and though customer service has been somewhat responsive the engineers that this has been escalated to are dead silent.

This is a simple board. If they can't get this right how could anyone expect them to produce a complex multi-layer board without the use having to verify every single trace and node?
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mediatechnology
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Re: JLCPCB Fails with Buggy Gerber Rendering

Post by mediatechnology »

I just heard back from customer support and learned that the board I showed above was actually imaged correctly. Only the preview had the error. I got the boards today and they match the Gerbers and are OK.

The build quality on the entire order is excellent. The solder mask is mirror-finished.

On the other board they admit they made a mistake and that the engineers didn't catch the error.
The board and the Gerber preview have an arc, instead of a line, in the keep-out area near the connectors at the board edge.

The first board is from ExpressPCB:

ExpressPCB:
Image

JLCPCB:
Image

How JLCPCB rendered the Gerber:
Image

How we remedy the order is still up in the air.
Do to the language barrier I don't quite understand their offer.
flyboy71
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Re: JLCPCB Fails with Buggy Gerber Rendering

Post by flyboy71 »

It almost looks like their Gerber rendering tool pulled in the wrong apertures but those oval features arent centered on a hole. I would assume you would be sending RS274X with embedded aperatures but I guess it can still interpret them wrong or it used a wrong aperature and an incorrect precision. I remember when I was a CAM guy at a local PCB shop and we had to get the RS274D file with a seperate aperture file, the results were almost the same, which is why we sent checkplots from the film plotter to the customer prior to release; most never looked at them because we processed a few bad ones. I miss the smell of fiberglass and ammonia.
My projects site: https://ornerscorner.neocities.org/

"Things are more like they are now then they ever were before" - Dwight
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mediatechnology
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Re: JLCPCB Fails with Buggy Gerber Rendering

Post by mediatechnology »

JLCPCB has finally agreed to remake the boards and sent me corrected images to approve.
They're going on a long holiday from April 28 to May 3rd.
I hope they can get the boards out before their vacation.
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Re: JLCPCB Fails with Buggy Gerber Rendering

Post by emrr »

What a pain!
Best,

Doug Williams
Electromagnetic Radiation Recorders
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mediatechnology
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Re: JLCPCB Fails with Buggy Gerber Rendering - Resolved

Post by mediatechnology »

I got a shipping notice from DHL a couple of days ago and the replacement boards will be in Wednesday.
We'll see how they look.
The rest have been well-made.
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mediatechnology
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Re: JLCPCB Fails with Buggy Gerber Rendering - Resolved

Post by mediatechnology »

Received the replacement boards today and JLCPCB produced a board that matched the Gerbers.
The finish is super-good.

About the only difference I see in these boards and the rest is the edge routing is a little ragged.
In the center of each edge is a small ridge making it appear that these boards were snapped out of a frame.
This was a rush order and none of the other boards had it so these may have been run on a quick-turn prototype line.
It's not an issue IMHO.

In the future I'm going to have to find a way to alert their engineers when a Gerber preview doesn't match the layout.

The real test of a manufacturer is how they respond to mistakes.
JLC made it right despite language and time zone differences.
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