DFM / DFA Verification
The cheapest place to catch a board that cannot be built is before you pay for boards. We check Gerbers, drill files, stack-up, panelisation and fabrication notes against what your fabricator can actually produce.
- Gerbers + drill
- Panelisation
- Fab-ready notes
What a DFM review actually is
We look at annular ring on the smallest features, mask and paste clearances, silkscreen legibility, panelisation, tool access, and whether the notes describe the board well enough for a production house that has never seen the project. Minimum feature and clearance figures are capability limits — confirm them against your fabricator’s current chart before committing.
A DFM review is the cheapest place to catch a board that cannot be built. After fabrication you are paying for boards; before fabrication you are paying for a document.
What we check
- Annular ring — on the smallest pads and vias, against your fabricator’s minimum, with margin for drill wander.
- Mask and paste clearances — solder mask expansion, paste aperture sizing, and whether fine-pitch parts have a chance of printing well.
- Silkscreen legibility — text size, placement over pads and vias, and whether the reference designators are actually readable after assembly.
- Panelisation — rail width, tooling holes, fiducials, and whether the panel survives the depaneling method you have chosen.
- Tool access — test points, probe access, and whether a technician can actually reach what they need to reach.
- Fabrication notes — whether the notes describe the board well enough for a house that has never seen the project, and whether they contradict the Gerbers.
What you get back
A document, ordered by severity, with a finding and a suggested fix for each item. Items are written so you can hand them to a designer or a vendor and have them actioned without a second call. We do not change your files — we tell you what to change and why.
How it runs
Send the Gerbers, drill files, stack-up and fabrication notes, plus your fabricator’s current capability chart. We come back with questions within a day, and the review lands in a few working days depending on board complexity.
Minimum feature and clearance figures are capability limits: confirm them against your fabricator’s current chart before committing.
Boards that went through this.
Released hardware from the Industrial Control archive — the same discipline applied to a real board, not a sample layout.
Related practices.
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Altium Designer
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KiCad
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EasyEDA
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Cadence Allegro
Send us the schematic.
Tell us your layer limits, the critical signals and the date the first prototype has to exist. You get an honest feasibility answer and a fixed scope before any work starts.