Your board, checked before you pay the fab
Your first small PCB, ordered from a Shenzhen fab. KiCad says it is fine, the fab's cheap rule set says otherwise, and you find out a week later when the order is put on hold or the vias come back broken. Send us the Gerbers and the drill file. We check them against the rule set you are ordering with and tell you which number fails.
See a real checkWhere a first board goes wrong
Drills too small for the cheap rules. A 0.25 mm via is fine on the fine rule set and refused on the standard one, which is often the cheapest price on the page.
Rings too thin. Copper around a hole thinner than the fab can hold. The drill wanders and the via opens.
The design rules were never set. KiCad's checks run against KiCad's defaults, not against the fab you are paying.
A real check, on a real board
A round 4-layer test board of ours, 9.2 × 15.5 mm of copper on top, 16 holes in 3 drill sizes. Pick the rules it is ordered with:
Both results are the checker's real output on this board's top copper and drill file, 15 October 2026. Clearance is measured from aperture sizes, not a full polygon check, and says so in the result. We run it on our own boards before they go to the fab.
What you get
- Every layer checked
- Each copper layer and the drill file against the fab's rules for the board you are ordering: layers, thickness and rule set.
- The number that fails
- Which drill, which ring, which gap, and the rule it broke, so you fix it in KiCad in minutes.
- Which rule set you need
- Whether your board fits the standard rules or needs the fine ones, before you see the price.
- From our desk in Shenzhen
- Answered within one working day. If you want, we order it and check the boards when they arrive.
Check your board
Tell us about the board. We answer within one working day.