At 10:48 PM 11/24/99 EST, you wrote: >Hi all > >I am not an expert at making boards. This is a little OT, but it has (2) pics >on the board so hopefully you'll forgive me. > >What is the proper distance that should be used to separate ground fill from >other tracks (different nets) and pads also different nets? The minimum track >width for my board is 10 mil. > >It looks like the default for Protel is 4mil. (.004 inches) around holes and >.008 mil from other tracks That seems a little tight. Jon: For reliability, etc., I generally use 15 mil with a minimum(!) of 10 mil clearances. 15-20 is preferred! It is very hard, but not impossible for a PCB house to bugger up this spacing. Even a local house that still uses silk screen technology for the resist can handle them with NO problem. Also use 55 mil pads with 35 mil holes for most through hole stuff--this allows one 15 mil track with 15 mil clearance between holes on 100 mil centers. Remember to specify GETEK or similar hi temperature material for the PCB. The slight extra cost is more than covered by the ease of handling the boards--specially if you are hand soldering parts using a hot air pencil. They just won't blister and delaminate. Kelly William K. Borsum, P.E. -- OEM Dataloggers and Instrumentation Systems & San Diego, California, USA