Rule of Thumb for Mouse Bites?
Creating a PCB that I envision as normally being attached, with a section that can be broken off and discarded in certain circumstances. At this point I'm just doing a V-score, which might be the correct solution, but if I wanted to do mouse bites do people generally have a footprint that they use (KiCad in my case)? Or is there a rule of thumb for drawing them in? Thx!
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I recommend always consulting with your PCB manufacturer. They have usually specific needs or habits for the mouse bites.
Went ahead and put a prototype order for this project. The idea is an add-on for the Raspberry Pi Pico that makes it easy to add capacitive touch sensing with 16 1M ohm resistors on the left IO pins.
Adding the cut seems to have made it more expensive, and I don't know if it'll be included in the final version. The idea is that the full board will allow it to be applied to a breadboard easily, but if you snap off the right side (that doesn't really do anything besides adding some duplicate pins) you can save space and weight when that is critical.
I was initially going to use a different board for capacitive sensing, but didn't find one that easily fit my needs. Incidentally, I applied to list it on Crowd Supply (at a rather modest $1000 funding goal) so it will be interesting to see their process.
Edit 1/25/2023: Weird, thought I sent this yesterday. Was in an unsent draft form, so published today.
Apparently my board is too small for v-scoring. Put in some mouse bites and a channel instead. Thinking that alternatively I could have made a couple back-to-back boards. I did that in one of the examples I discuss in this article: https://embeddedcomputing.com/technology/analog-and-power/pcbs-components/v-score-board-separation-why-how-and-thru-hole-temporary-connection-trick
Embedded Computing Design
V-Score Board Separation: Why, How, and Thru-Hole Temporary Connect...
Some time ago, I wrote an article about panelization basics, mostly focusing on “mouse bites” as the panel separation technique. The other way to separate boards is using a technique called v-scoring. The basics of this technique are shown in the Royal Circuit Solutions video below, which is meant to selectively weaken a PCB for separation at a ...
Always pumped with PCB is en route. Also managed to get the required 1M 0603 resistors I needed at Tampa Hackerspace last night, so should be able to put it together quickly.
I probably should do a manual version too if I'm going to do a YouTube video on it, but have been kind of putting it off.
Arrived yet? What's the video schedule?
Yep, it's arrived and worked as I'd hoped. Hoping to post the video tomorrow and will share!