Rivets, apparently. This is how you 'homebrew' your own through-hole plating. And the idea of doing that for 80+ holes got unattractive real quick. I decided to have a look at online board-manufacturing and see how much it would cost - compared to my time. I found
OHS Park which advertised three boards including shipping for US$31 or thereabouts, and that's well within my budget. I've gone through their ordering process, and really liked the simplicity of their order process. I just uploaded my Eagle "board" file and away it went, giving me the following views and explanation of what I'd get (screen grabs)...
This shows the final manufactured board as if you held it in your hand. Your design should show gold copper, purple mask, white silk, black drills, and the board outline.
- BoardTop.png (230.37 KiB) Viewed 10744 times
This shows the final manufactured board as if you held it in your hand. Your design should show gold copper, purple mask, white silk, black drills, and the board outline. Internal cutouts are indicated by a black outline but are not filled in.
- BoardBottom.png (119.19 KiB) Viewed 10744 times
Drills should show up as white circles on a purple background. We want a single merged drill file exported in Excellon or NC Drills format with 2:4 precision, absolute coordinates, and no zero suppression. We will merge multiple drill files into one file and only plate the holes which pass through copper. Drills smaller than our minimums will be increased to the minimum size. See the design rules. No overlapping drill hits. No blind or buried vias. Small slots and plated slots are not supported. See our slots page. No oval or other non-circular drills
- Drills.png (71.45 KiB) Viewed 10744 times
This layer should appear 'mirrored' as if you were looking down on it through the board from the top. We will place copper everywhere we see gold color on this layer.
- BottomLayer.png (119.76 KiB) Viewed 10744 times
Soldermask layers show us where to remove the purple solder resist. The gold-colored areas will be exposed on the final board, and purple areas will be covered.
- TopSolderMask.png (104.43 KiB) Viewed 10744 times
We will place copper everywhere we see gold color on this layer.
- TopLayer.png (135.64 KiB) Viewed 10744 times
We will ignore the portion of the silkscreen that extends beyond the board outline. We will automatically remove any silkscreen that crosses drilled holes or exposed copper.
- TopSilkScreen.png (162.2 KiB) Viewed 10744 times
This layer should appear 'mirrored' as if you were looking down on it through the board from the top.
- BottomSolderMask.png (102.96 KiB) Viewed 10744 times
So, I've ordered already - let's see how it turns out!
Here's the Eagle files I used - schematic and board... I hope there's no errors, but want to stop spending
hours and hours on this, and since I've put an order in that pretty much puts a stop to rearranging the deck chairs.