PCB Sideplating

1. The definition of Sideplating

Sideplating is the metalization of the board edge in the PCB filed. Edge plating, Border plated, plated contour, side metal, these words can also be used to describe the same function. 

2. Sideplating Process

Drilling - Milling plated Slots - Cleaning - Copper sink

3. Possible applications of sideplating:

．Improvement of EMC performance by shielding the inner region of multilayers (eg for HF circuit boards

．Cooling function with the edge as additional cooling surface, where an active heat dissipation can be used

．Housing connection

．Board-on-Board connection (see plated half-holes)

4. Design Parameters

To guarantee the producibility of the sideplating, the metalized area must be defined using overlapping copper (copper surface, pads, or tracks) in the CAD layout. Minimum overlap:500μm.

On the connected layer, min 300um of connected copper must be defined.

On non-connected layers, the copper should have gap of min. 800μm from the outer contour.

5.Limitations

Because the manufacturer needs to fix the PCB in the production panel during the process, they will not be able to plate the entire length of the edge. Therefore, some gaps are required when placing the rout label. Manufacturing circuit boards using edge plating requires the layout of the circuit board where edge plating is required before starting the through-hole plating process. This precludes V-cutting scores on plates that require edge plating.

6. Usually, we recommend customers to make immersion gold or immersion silver for edge plating.  When designing the solder mask layer, it should be solder mask opening in the file. Also, you can show us some texts to show the detailed requirements.

7. Pictures to show the finished board’s sideplating