kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Kliment (Future Bits)" <kliment@xxxxxxxx>]

Hey,

Without prejudice to whether or not this should be in Kicad, and how it
should be implemented, there's a way to do this now, with existing
tools. You start from gerbers - libgerbv supports this operation out of
the box for example, and it knows exactly what it's trying to produce.
So you can plot to gerbers and then run it through gerbv to get what you
need right now.

Kliment

On 23.05.20 22:51, Vesa Solonen wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> This goes mostly to feature wish list, but some technical details may be
> of interest. The use of the feature would be (laser) toner transfer
> process for PCBs.
> 
> After some extensive testing it seems many printers/drivers do not print
> vectors as well as raw raster if one wishes to get the most contrast or
> toner density. E.g. with any settings vector input puts less toner on
> the paper than the same rasterized to printers native resolution.
> 
> For the process in general, color printers are way better as the toner
> is finer and has better binder. Also the paper type setting makes a
> great difference as one would guess, 'Rough' getting the most on HP M452nw.
> 
> Rasterizing e.g. the PDF-output is possible, but it is not optimal as
> the rasterizer does not have any clue what it is trying to produce (a
> PCB). Also many available tools rasterize with anti aliasing that just
> makes it worse as the output is one bit per pixel anyway.
> 
> So some smart rasterizer (with grid fitting) to one bit per pixel raster
> at selected resolution (dpi) would be needed. My guess is that raw png
> output would be the most usable.
> 
> -Vesa
> 
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