PCB Design Perfection Starts in the CAD Library – Part 13

Mounting hardware normally consists of these 4 items (See Figure 1) –

1. Phillips Head Screw
2. Hex Nut
3. Flat Washer
4. Lock Washer

Figure 1 - MTG Hardware

There are 4 types of mounting holes –

1. Supported – Plated through with annular ring
2. Supported – Plated through with annular ring with vias
Unsupported – Non-plated and with copper pads

Unsupported – Non-plated and with no copper pads

 

 

The supported mounting hole usually gets tied to the GND plane without a Thermal Relief (a direct connection is best) and the supported hole w/vias gets both the main hole and the vias tied to the GND plane. Due to the fact that mounting hardware never gets soldered to the PCB, there is no reason for a Thermal Relief pattern and you connect all holes (including vias) directly to the plane. The unsupported (non-plated) hole has no connection to a GND plane layer and they require an outer layer keep-out defined that compensates for the hardware tolerances. See figure 2 for an illustration of the slop tolerance of a flat washer and the necessary copper keep-out sizing.

Figure 2 - Keepout

 There are two primary reasons for adding vias to the supported mounting hole. The first was to insure that if the screw threads stripped the copper plating from the main hole that the vias would still provide adequate ground connections. The second reason was for additional support to prevent the PCB from crushing when too much torque was used to tighten the nut. The average via hole size for mounting holes is 0.5 mm. See Figure 3 for a supported mounting hole with vias.

Figure 3 - Mounting Hole w/Vias

See Table 1 for the most popular PCB hardware sizes for metric unit technology.

Table 1 - ISO (metric) Hardware

In Tables 2 and 4 there are 3 different padstack configurations for each metric screw size for land (pad) size calculations.

1. No Washer – Pan Head Clearance
2. Flat Washer

The land (pad) diameter is equal to the hardware diameter and a placement courtyard is added to compensate for the slop tolerance indicated in Figure 2.

Note: These Land (pad) and Placement Courtyard padstack values are in the “Least” material values. You can add 0.25 mm for “Nominal” or 0.5 mm for “Most” Land (pad) and Placement Courtyard environments. The hole sizes are for a loose fit.

Table 2 - ISO Loose Fit Mounting

Table 3 - ISO Tight Fit Mounting

See Table 3 for the most popular PCB hardware sizes for ANSI standards.

Table 4 - ANSI Hardware

Table 5 - ANSI Loose Fit Mounting

Table 6 - ANSI Tight Fit Mounting

The “Loose Fit” mounting holes are normally used on large boards greater than 100 mm (4”) and the “Tight Fit” mounting holes are commonly used for smaller board sizes.

There are some differences in hardware manufacturer’s feature sizes, so make sure that the hardware you use is adequately covered with the correct pad size and/or keep-out.

There are 3-Tiers for the Mounting Hole family, but the only difference is the “Placement Courtyard Excess”:

• Least – 0.1 mm annular
• Nominal – 0.25 mm annular
• Most – 0.5 mm annular

Note: All numeric values in the Tables are in millimeters