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Build Your Own PCB Milling Machine
mwandel writes "It used to be that one off amateur printed circuit boards were all etched in acid. A lot of companies nowadays use a special form of milling machine to mill them out of solid copper clad circuit boards. This guy Jonathan Westhues built his own PCB milling machine out of various parts, with a laminate trimmer as the milling head. Lots of other neat hacks on his Webpage as well."
"Also since these would be milled, they would be called MCB's. Get it straight. "
Yeah and traditional boards are ECBs right?
"Milling machines, while a marvel of modern technology in their own right, cannot create multi-layered circuit boards, unless you ignore the obvious extra steps involved."
Yeah and etching a board obviously couldn't either, could it??
Troll alert!
It seems dabbling in electronics is a dying hobby for the younger crowds... I hope projects like this spawn new curiosity and interest.
i tcellar.com/
For those new to this hobby... here are some publications that could be of great value to you:
http://www.nutsvolts.com/
http://www.circu
http://www.poptronics.com/
Anyone know of any others?
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Granted it's only double sided - but at that it's wonderful. Wow, no more chemicals! I've always-forever wanted one of these but the pro milling machines are out of my league.
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"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
You can make a very nice machine for not that much money that has a very nice accuracy. You could do surface mount stuff with it. That said, how many hobbiests base their projects mostly on 88 pin TQFPs? And once you build your machine, all it costs you is a little time and the blank PCBs. That's alot less than $30 a board, especially if you are going to make 10 of 'em.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
This is quite cool.. I wonder if you could hook up a drill to a normal flatbed plotter.. You can find old Roland plotters quite cheap on ebay and places now..
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."
Yes you can get old ones pretty cheap. But as the poster I responded to was going towards new, so I responded as such. Your right about the wiring and toolling, mills and collets and such are the reall hidden cost. And yes a CNC crash is ugly. Thats why untill the program has been tested a Machiniest stands there and watchs.
I do know G code, I had to learn it. It's not the hardest thing in the world, but it's not the funnest thing either. it's like playing 3D logo. But making software to take a 3D cad file into G code is not so fun.
And sorry but there are no free CAD programs out there that are worth a damn.
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How could "ugly" construction perform better on something so sensitive to impedance and trace layout and length as RF?
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Simple--you have a continuous ground plane underneath your components, which means that ground leads can be made as short as possible. Also, since you're not constrained by layout, you can ensure that inter-component leads are as short as possible, and that the input is nowhere near the output, etc. etc.
It's often the case that there are fewer problems, less stray capacitance, etc. with ugly construction over PCB construction.
As a benefit, it's faster as well.
Once in a great while, we got a board with a funny pattern for some traces, and he pointed out those were actual circuitry. He said that at high enough frequencies, an engineer could play with the trace pattern and fiddle with impedence or frequency attenuation.
Lastly he said of course we can call them whatever we want - but whatever the customer says, goes. The customer was always right. :-)
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"