Milled Board Done

[greenJames]

Hello all
Well I've made (cut) my first board today.



Now while I enjoyed my self making this board I did find it very long winded
I drew my design in Diptrace and then exported it to a DXF file which sounds easy How ever when I opened it in my CAD program and VCARVE PRO I was faced with single lines for my traces. Now faced with single lines I just offset them inwards & outwards cool but it took for ever to do also at the end of the day my traces are all a bit close but I think usable but I will let you all be the judge of that. after I offset all the traces I went to my CAD program and added just the holes as on the vcarve drawing I deleted all the holes as I wanted it to be constant which worked very well.

I have to admit my first cut out of the traces was wrong I didn't mirror the drawing o'well you live and learn all in all it worked out quite well but could be a bit faster next time.

I even got cocky and engraved the parts to the top, next time I will spray the top with white paint first and then engrave.

I think I broke two of all my cutters doing this

2 .01 20 deg engraver
2 0.80 end mills
2 2 mm endmill for cutting out the board and Location holes

I think next time I'm going to try and change trace and pad sizes esp on the resistors, diode's,motor,power,LDR also the power amps but for a first go I think I've made a good start






it feels quite nice to have made my first board

Plus I did it on my own CNC machine. I spent all weekend making a vac bed for my machine that didn't work how I wanted it to, My PCB board was to bent for the vac to work. with this in mind I'm going to increase the size of the intake holes from 6 mm to a whopping 32 mm as I have some old pvc pip in the garage.

but the board I made did benefit from the flat vac bed.

 

[JimB]

Very interesting.

I have been flirting with some surface mount component recently and had been wondering about producing PCBs with a CNC milling machine.

What are you using for the milling machine?
Any chance of a picture?

A few years ago I saw a small machine (maybe a Proxxon ?) screaming out a circuit board at an exhibition.
To my regret, I did not get any details of it.

JimB

 

[Mr RB]

Congrats! That's not bad for a first PCB.

The easiest (least time) way to route PCBs is to use Eagle PCB editor (they have a free version) and you get a plugin for Eagle that exports Gcode direct, generating the outlines around each track.

You can see it here;
https://groups.yahoo.com/group/pcb-gcode/

Do you have a photo of your CNC machine?

You might have gone a bit deep with the engraving, based on some other examples I have seen;

**broken link removed**

 

[atferrari]

Congratulations GJ!! What equipment do you use?

Hi JB, look **broken link removed** The proxxon modified by them has been in my mind for the last two years.

Given the current restrictions (locally) I decided to keep dreaming until I can buy it.

 

[greenJames]

here is my CNC Machine made with my son over the summer holidays last year
the spindle is a 2.2kw water cooled with VSC with a cutting area of 960 mm x 840 mm and run with mach3





My copy of eagle is not working on my computer for some reason, it is XP and getting quite old now sum 15 years old. But is getting replaced in August so I will carry on with Diptrace for a bit longer

James

 

[JimB]

I have been considering a similar style of machine, and found this one:
**broken link removed**

The things that worried me about it were:
Is it TOO cheap?
It uses a parallel printer port interface from the PC. Not many PCs have that these days.

JimB

 

[greenJames]

can I ask a question is Negative Dry Film Photoresist the same as PCB Solder Mask or should I say can it be use as solder mask ??

James

 

[alec_t]

Nice board!

I'm going to increase the size of the intake holes from 6 mm to a whopping 32 mm

Provided the pcb edges have air-tight seals to the vac table that won't increase the flattening force on the pcb; it will only increase the pump-down speed. What is you vac source?

 

[greenJames]

Hello all
I would like to thank you all for your gentle words of encouragement. I know it’s not always nice to be repeating the same old stuff when a new member come to the forum seeking for the same guidance and excepting the same enthusiasm is if the question has never been asked before, for this I’m appreciative as it must be a labour of love giving the same advice.

I know I’m in for a long learning curve but with help from you kind and generous professionals I will get there.

When I was a child my Father used to make things with electronics all the time practical Electronics I think was his bible he bought for years as I remember. I remember selling years of his magazines at school, but sadly my father didn't have the interest in teaching me how to make electrical-gizmo’s. Well that’s going to change with my son I Love finding bit and gizmo’s for him to make. Proud Father here my son has just finished his robotic arm (one from Maplin) mostly by himself. I only stepped in when he got frustrated. I have also purchased a Raspberry Pi for him as I would like him to control the Robotic arm with it.

We are going to make a solar tracker, LED 8x64 Matrix Display with wi-fi control if possible also he would like to hack his fan and make a POV.

Well on to the reason I started to write this post/reply is I think I’ve found a better way of making my boards, well the process of drawing and writing the gcode first I altered my trace size and hole size changed ic contacts to oval pads which gives me more area to solder too.

So after I have designed my PCB I have saved it to gerber file and then open it in gerv program and save this as a PDF then convert the PDF to Jpeg after this I can open it in Vcarve.

When I get to Vcarve I can then draw the vectors straight from the Jpg File. From there it’s easy to generate the Vectors with a couple of clicks of the mouse done the first time I did this I used blue image and found I had to clean up my vectors a little bit but it worked out quite nice next time I'm going to use BLACK and convert PDF to Jpg in photoshop (better black and white control)

Here is a screen shot of my vectors





the vac I'm using is a RSDE1
Link..............**broken link removed**

Again thank you for the advice
GreenJames

PS

If I can do anything for the people here on this forum just ask I will cut anything on my cnc machine for free just supply material cost and postage

 

[Mr RB]

That's an awesome machine James, and thanks for telling us more about it and the way you carved the PCB.