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Re: PCB prototyping idea
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N_Cook
May 26, 2016, 4:28:41 PM5/26/16
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On 26/05/2016 20:16, Jon Elson wrote:
> N_Cook wrote:
>
>> I was in a craft shop today and one of these was being demonstrated
>> www.cricut.com
>> I got the demonstrator to try it out on 0.05mm thick copper foil. It
>> worked very well on parallel lines 0.3mm spacing and letters where the
>> vertical body of letters wer of qwerty were 2mm high and extra
>> curveyness of the "fun" script cut out and came through perfectly well.
>> She was so impressed she emailed a pic the engineering department of
>> that company.
>> Machine is roller feed of flat sheet. Requires firm , more than stick-it
>> note, bonding of the foil to a backing or the foil will tear. The cutter
>> was not new, a few months of about 22 hours a day use, often left
>> running overnight for multiple outputs, like 3D printer operation.
> Hmmm, very interesting. Can you send me a picture of that test, too?
>
> A guy I'm working with is doing wearable LED clothing. We made some
> prototypes with Rogers flexible PCB material, that is super expensive. It
> looks like this machine might be able to use some cheap laminated material,
> like they use for metallic labels. You just need to get the stuff made up
> with copper foil instead of aluminum. (Cricut seems to like stainless
> foil.)
>
> Where did you get the copper foil? Was this just bare copper foil, or was
> the foil attached to some plastic backing? That's what I'd want, of course,
> to make a flexible PCB. Or, does Cricut supply the backing as a standard
> consumable?
>
> Thanks for the info, looks VERY interesting.
>
> One other area, can you feed it arbitrary drawings? How about Gerber files?
> (Yeah, I know, I'm asking a lot!!)
>
> Jon
>
The craft shop was next to a retail nursery supermarket, so I bought a
roll of copper slug tape, 30mm wide x.05mm ( apparently better than beer
or eggshells to deter slugs, think touching metal foil to a sensitive
tooth). I assume wider copper foil is available from elsewhere.
She said you could load any data , not necesssary to use their
propretary stuff
> N_Cook wrote:
>
>> I was in a craft shop today and one of these was being demonstrated
>> www.cricut.com
>> I got the demonstrator to try it out on 0.05mm thick copper foil. It
>> worked very well on parallel lines 0.3mm spacing and letters where the
>> vertical body of letters wer of qwerty were 2mm high and extra
>> curveyness of the "fun" script cut out and came through perfectly well.
>> She was so impressed she emailed a pic the engineering department of
>> that company.
>> Machine is roller feed of flat sheet. Requires firm , more than stick-it
>> note, bonding of the foil to a backing or the foil will tear. The cutter
>> was not new, a few months of about 22 hours a day use, often left
>> running overnight for multiple outputs, like 3D printer operation.
> Hmmm, very interesting. Can you send me a picture of that test, too?
>
> A guy I'm working with is doing wearable LED clothing. We made some
> prototypes with Rogers flexible PCB material, that is super expensive. It
> looks like this machine might be able to use some cheap laminated material,
> like they use for metallic labels. You just need to get the stuff made up
> with copper foil instead of aluminum. (Cricut seems to like stainless
> foil.)
>
> Where did you get the copper foil? Was this just bare copper foil, or was
> the foil attached to some plastic backing? That's what I'd want, of course,
> to make a flexible PCB. Or, does Cricut supply the backing as a standard
> consumable?
>
> Thanks for the info, looks VERY interesting.
>
> One other area, can you feed it arbitrary drawings? How about Gerber files?
> (Yeah, I know, I'm asking a lot!!)
>
> Jon
>
The craft shop was next to a retail nursery supermarket, so I bought a
roll of copper slug tape, 30mm wide x.05mm ( apparently better than beer
or eggshells to deter slugs, think touching metal foil to a sensitive
tooth). I assume wider copper foil is available from elsewhere.
She said you could load any data , not necesssary to use their
propretary stuff
Jon Elson
May 26, 2016, 6:44:41 PM5/26/16
to
N_Cook wrote:
>>
>
> The craft shop was next to a retail nursery supermarket, so I bought a
> roll of copper slug tape, 30mm wide x.05mm ( apparently better than beer
> or eggshells to deter slugs, think touching metal foil to a sensitive
> tooth). I assume wider copper foil is available from elsewhere.
> She said you could load any data , not necesssary to use their
> propretary stuff
Ah, so you stuck your own copper to the self-stick base material for the
>>
>
> The craft shop was next to a retail nursery supermarket, so I bought a
> roll of copper slug tape, 30mm wide x.05mm ( apparently better than beer
> or eggshells to deter slugs, think touching metal foil to a sensitive
> tooth). I assume wider copper foil is available from elsewhere.
> She said you could load any data , not necesssary to use their
> propretary stuff
machine, and then cut it! Wow, sounds very simple, and avoids paying Rogers
about $1 per square inch!
OK, I will have to tell my contact about this, it looks like a real solution
to a problem. Now, one little detail is how well the copper foil will stick
to the base material after a bunch of flexing, etc. if the copper starts to
come loose, combine that with Lithium 18650 batteries and we could have a
nice fire!
Jon
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