PCB Milling

[Avi Silverman]

First attempt. Not perfect; definitely need to dial in some settings... most of the 10mil traces were either not cut deep enough, or got routed out, but that's 1/100 of an inch and the board was just stuck down with duct tape, so pretty happy with the initial results. Might be a class in order pretty soon. <3

[Zak Smolen]

Was that with the Shapeoko?

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 16, 2016, at 6:14 PM, Avi Silverman <avi.si...@gmail.com> wrote:

First attempt. Not perfect; definitely need to dial in some settings... most of the 10mil traces were either not cut deep enough, or got routed out, but that's 1/100 of an inch and the board was just stuck down with duct tape, so pretty happy with the initial results. Might be a class in order pretty soon. <3

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[Avi Silverman]

Yes.

On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 11:26 PM, Zak Smolen <zaks...@gmail.com> wrote:

Was that with the Shapeoko?

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 16, 2016, at 6:14 PM, Avi Silverman <avi.si...@gmail.com> wrote:

First attempt. Not perfect; definitely need to dial in some settings... most of the 10mil traces were either not cut deep enough, or got routed out, but that's 1/100 of an inch and the board was just stuck down with duct tape, so pretty happy with the initial results. Might be a class in order pretty soon. <3

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[Zak Smolen]

Oh awesome! I wonder if you could get it to drill the holes too?

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[Avi Silverman]

Yes, you can. I ended up having to run, so I didn't have time to switch bits and run another job, but it should be fairly easy. Did a bunch of reading Friday evening and yesterday, so hoping to do some testing and have much nicer results this week.

[Bob Sinclair]

Is there an advantage in milling over etching?

[Avi Silverman]

For me, the main advantage is that I don't have to deal with chemical etchants (which we are very much not set up for). The way I've done etching before involves using photo paper and a laser printer to make a mirror image and then a lamination machine to transfer the toner onto copper clad board. There is a decent chance that it doesn't come out right the first time, so you have to do the process a few times. Then you also have to drill all the holes manually.

Once I dial in the settings for the CNC, it should be fairly set and forget.

I imagine that with a professional setup etching is a lot faster and produces a higher quality PCB, but for DIY, I'm hoping to have this set up to knock out decent single sided PCBs with ease.

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[Bob Sinclair]

The holes! That makes sense.

On Friday, September 16, 2016 at 6:14:32 PM UTC-4, Avi wrote:

[ajbieee]

Nice. 

Hope to be able to make it over tomorrow night and see in your PCB work in-person, Avi.

I also have something I want to mention to the group during the regular 7 pm meeting from the local IEEE Section in conjunction with the UNC-Asheville Engineering Program in relation to a possible new IEEE group that the IEEE Section Chair (Fred Orland) has been working on with UNC-A, for any of you guys that might be interested in something like that...

AJ Burke

IEEE WNC

LCN Chair / STEM Coordinator

Senior Member, IEEE

On Friday, September 16, 2016 at 6:14:32 PM UTC-4, Avi wrote:

[Zak Smolen]

In my college we had a milling machine and I preferred it over etching. It was easy to use as you just had to export some files from the CAD software and press go. No chemicals, very clean traces, good isolation between traces (since it actually mills down between traces), and ideally drilling and routing can be done in addition to the milling of traces. Double-sided boards can be tricky to line up but I came up with some tricks for that if anyone as issues.

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