On 05/09/2009, at 7:06 AM, Daniel Johnson wrote:
> Interesting problem.
>
> Try loading the eagle PDF into inkscape and have a look at it.
Well, if it looks fine in Illustrator (and Preview) I'm pretty
confident the PDF does not have whatever it is that the direct to-
printer. What I did notice only when I'd uploaded the images (made
much more obvious by the scanner's auto-sharpen) is that every fill is
offset a little to the lower left to the outlines ...
I did try eagle -> PDF -> some other app -> Print and ... the smear is
gone, although something else has happened to drill holes - I'm lucky
enough to have Illustrator, I think I'll be sticking to that route!
> I make solder paste stencils by printing the tcream layer in eagle.
> Next I load it into inkscape and then switch to the outline view.
> The files is saved as a SVG and then cut on a critcut machine.
>
> A PCB like the one in your example can be easily cut. I am still
> working on finer pitch parts like TQFP.
That would be nice, but it also etched just fine, my first flirtation
with 10mil traces and running things under SMD parts. Infuriatingly, i
managed to break a trace with the drill chuck ...
PG