Fabricators

Explanation of Quilter’s fabricator profiles, including stack-ups, fabrication rules, compile targets, filtering options, and pre-supported manufacturers.

Quilter gives you the ability to generate layouts that utilize stack-ups and fabrication rules sourced directly from fabricators, as well as a beta feature for reading them from your input files.

Fabricator profiles

A fabricator profile contains information about the stack-ups and fabrication rules that a PCB manufacturer supports and that Quilter will use when exploring layouts intended for that fabricator.

Fabricator profiles consist of:

• Stackups, which define the physical parameters of your board, such as layer count, copper weight, and key material properties impacting physics calculations.

• Fabricator constraints, which determine the geometric limitations of the particular fabrication service that the fabricator will use to manufacture your layout. Examples include minimum copper trace width and clearances.

Each candidate that Quilter explores references a stack-up and fabrication rule set supported by the fabricator, as defined by the fabrication profile. We refer to this intersection of stack-up and fabrication rulesets as a "compile target."

Custom fabricator profiles

Quilter offers fabrication profile customization and implementation as a service to all paid customers. Customers can work with Quilter to define one or more custom fabrication profiles that utilize the stack-ups and fabrication rules that match the capabilities of their typical fabrication partners.

Detected fabricator profile from user input files

ECAD tools generally save a stack-up and fabrication rules (DRC rules, in many cases) to your files. If you have intentionally configured them and not left the settings on defaults, you may want to try this feature.

Pre-defined fabricators

For convenience, Quilter has pre-defined fabrication profiles for each of the following fabricators:

Fabricator	Description	Location	Website
JLCPCB	High-volume, low-cost PCB manufacturer with rapid turnaround.	China	jlcpcb.com
MacroFab	North American contract manufacturer offering prototyping to production.	Houston, TX, USA	macrofab.com
OSH Park	Community-focused PCB prototyping service for small-batch orders.	Oregon, USA	oshpark.com
CircuitHub	Turnkey PCB assembly service integrated with online BOM sourcing.	Massachusetts, USA	circuithub.com
American Standard Circuits	Full-service PCB manufacturer specializing in advanced and RF designs.	West Chicago, IL, USA	asc-i.com

Example: OSH Park

Here's an example "Fabrication Profile" for OSH Park, one of our Fabricators, that specifies 12 unique Oshpark compile targets that align against OSH Park's fabrication service capabilities and can be explored in parallel each time Quilter generates layout candidates.

Fabrication Rules		Stackup: 2 Layer Standard	Stackup: 4-Layer Standard	Stackup: 6-Layer Standard
Common_10_mil	• 10 mil trace/space • 12 mil drill	✅	✅	✅
Common_8_mil	• 8 mil trace/space • 12 mil drill	✅	✅	✅
Oshpark_2_Layer	• 6 mil trace/space • 10 mil drill	✅	✅	✅
Oshpark_4_Layer	• 5 mil trace/space • 10 mil drill	🔴 Not supported by fabricator	✅	✅
Oshpark_6_Layer	• 5 mil trace/space • 8 mil drill	🔴 Not supported by fabricator	🔴 Not supported by fabricator	✅

How to specify

You can easily select the target fabricator that Quilter uses to generate candidates. On the Stackups page, select the fabricators and parameters you wish to see at the candidate review, and Quilter will attempt to place and route using those requirements.