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The Visitech technology glossary

DLP imaging, direct imaging lithography and additive manufacturing carry a vocabulary that is half acronym. This is what we mean by each of them — in plain terms, written by the engineers who build the hardware.

A to Z

Every term, defined

Search for a term, or narrow the list to a theme. Every entry links to itself, so you can send a colleague straight to the definition you meant.

9 terms

C

CAD
Computer-aided design — the software a part or a circuit is designed in, and the source of the artwork a photohead ultimately exposes.

F

FPGA
Field-programmable gate array — a chip whose logic is configured after manufacture. In a photohead it is what moves image data to the DMD fast enough to keep up with the stage.

G

GDSII
A binary file format for integrated-circuit and photomask layouts. One of the artwork formats a photohead can be fed directly.
Gerber
The long-standing PCB artwork format: one file per layer, describing the copper, the soldermask and the legend as shapes to be drawn.

M

MEMS
Micro-electro-mechanical systems — devices with moving mechanical parts built at chip scale. A DMD is one: several million hinged mirrors on a die.

O

OASIS
The successor format to GDSII for layout data — the same job, in far smaller files, which matters once a layer runs to gigabytes.
ODB++
A PCB manufacturing data format that carries the whole job — copper layers, soldermask, drill data and the netlist — in one structure rather than a set of separate files.

P

PCB
Printed circuit board — the board that carries and connects a product's electronics. Direct imaging lithography is how the copper pattern and the soldermask get onto it.
Printed circuit board
The board that carries and connects a product's electronics. Shortened to PCB.

Still not clear?

Ask the people who built it

A definition only goes so far. Tell us the substrate, the line/space you are aiming at and the format, and we will come back with what it means for your machine — usually within two business days.