It is common for PCB Global’s Computer Aided manufacturing (CAM) Engineering department to have Engineering Questions, also known as, EQ’s to confirm with our customers, dependant on the quality of the design file provided. One example of a typical EQ is shown below:

Mechanical Layers in Altium/Protel File

EQ from CAM:

Are the mechanical layers from GM2, GM4, GM7 and GM8 relevant for PCB fabrication?

Explanation:

Most Altium/Protel files we receive tend to have mechanical layers which are not required for the actual bare printed circuit board fabrication. These are usually part of the product design and have no relevance to our bare PCB fabrication processes.

 Resolution:

Our customer in this case, confirmed to ignore these 4 mechanical layers.

For further tips and information when designing and laying out your printed circuit board design file please do not hesitate to contact our PCB Global team at sales@pcbglobal.com