by OLIMEX Ltd in KiCAD, OSHW Tags: github, kicad, libraries

We uploaded all our KiCAD libraries on GitHub and going to maintain them there.

Why we do this? Because many beginners who download our OSHW boards are confused by the messages from KiCAD for missing libraries 🙂 this is easy to solve by adding RELATIVE paths to search the libraries as we always provide the library cache with the boards, i.e. all components used in the board are cached locally in the project directory, but again many beginners are confused.

Now they have all components we use in our daily work, uploaded and updated daily.

NOTE: These components are specific to OUR production, technology, limitations, way of work etc. They work optimally for us allowing us to achieve maximum yield during production. There is no guarantee of any kind that these same settings will be best for your own production, SO USE THEM ON YOUR OWN RISK!

There are tons of duplicated components which also are defined in original KiCAD libraries, again we did these as the KiCAD default libraries are made up to vendor datasheets and may not work well in our own production process.

To give you example: TQFP 0.5 mm step ICs per datasheet must have 0.3 mm width pads with 0.2 mm spaces between the pads, but using our process this yields in lot of shorts, so we made them with 0.25 mm pads width and 0.25 mm space, the 120 um thick stencils we use give best yield with 0.23 mm pad opening for solder paste – this may be not optimal for other manufacturer process who use other thickness stencils etc. BUT it works best for our technology and process based on our experience and tests.

Almost every components in our libraries have such considerations when it’s created. I hope you got the idea.

Note that almost none of our components have 3D draiwng, because our people still didn’t learn any 3D CAD tool well enough to make these, neither we use this KiCAD 3D drawing feature in our work. It may be improved in future, but for the moment if you need 3D drawing to some component you can do it by yourself and contribute back 🙂