Conformal Coating Drawings

[cheece2001]

I do my layouts in Altium and sometimes I need to conformal coat the boards and certain areas need to be masked.

Currently I just take a print screen of the board in altium, add hatched box on the places I want to mask in paint and then import the picture into a solidworks template and send it off. Sometimes making the hatched boxed area in paint seems to take me a long time.

How do you guys go about making conformal coating drawings and showing the masked areas? Do you use a software or do you do something like what i do.

 

[Mattylad]

I use the software I do the board in.

Simple figures on a spare layer, like you do in paint.

The advantage of that is - that they are all in the same file - all available for editing with the same software and available next time I modify it.

I am sure that Altium must be able to do this too?

P.S. another advantage of this is thatI can also output the data in a CAD format that the sprayers can recognise if needs be.

 

[cheece2001]

is that some sort of feature that the software gives where u output to that specific format that the sprawyer can recognize?

Do you only put notes that pertain to con formal coating to only appear and hide all the fab notes for the board house?

 

[marce]

It works the same as solder resist artwork, where there is a figure you don't want conformal coating, it is a negative artwork. From this they can create their working mask for applying the conformal coating.
Conformal coating is generally done after the board has been fabricated and assembled, so you need to provide notes that are pertinent just to conformal coating.

 

[cheece2001]

Thank you very much !!