Milling Circuit Boards on a Homemade CNC - Nephele03e01
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
- I'm going to be making a lot of circuit boards for Nephele 3. I did a bunch of work on my CNC software that controls my router to make the whole process really streamlined.
I switched from engraving bits to endmills. Once I figured out all the stuff I didn't know, it's a really awesome upgrade that gives very consistent and fast isolation cuts.
I hope you enjoy. If you think I might know the answer to a question about circuit board milling, hit me up in the comments.
Setting up and maintaining prototyping workflows is such a power move.
Great video..
I am very happy with cheap V-Cut bits, even with a terrible chuck/collet.. I think expensive bits are overkill for this kind of job..
I have a cheap crappy Chineese 3018 CNC. Instead of buying it I should have built my own.. There is nothing good about this CNC.. I replaced nearly every part of it: rods with linear rails, T-nuts, Z assembly with 3D printed one.. Only ER11 chuck, collet, steppers and the spindle motor remain. Bit has 0.1mm wobble. Adding that to 0.2mm V-Cut bit, around 0.32mm tool, the results are satisfying.. I know 0.2mm is needed for some packages. I orderred new chuck, and collet.
Even with this configuration, it took my electronics life another level.. Design and build in 60 minutes and repeat.. Fantastic!..
That's awesome, thanks for sharing. Nothing beats the turnaround during prototyping of being able to make your own circuit boards. :)
Great! Thanks Josh. Just found out that flatcam is available for Linux!!! yea me! I run Linux Mint (fork of Ubuntu) and love it to death. I've been getting confused about gerber files vs grbl files lol. Flat cam to the rescue I reckon. On another note, I'd like to do my boards green, then use the cnc to remove the resist for each solder connections. Any ideas on this?
Thanks in advance!
Doug.
Sorry for taking so long to reply, I didn't notice this comment when it came in three days ago. I saw a marketing video for a company that sells a mini CNC router that's specifically for endmills (edit: for PCBs). Their process has you milling the traces first, and then your apply an epoxy solder mask on top of that. Then the router delicately mills just the epoxy off of the top of the foil (edit: where the solder pads should go). Given how warped the blank boards are and how very thin the copper cladding is, I haven't attempted it myself. I'm using mine for prototyping - to figure out how the circuits need to work, but I'm going to be ordering a small batch of boards from JLCPCB once I know the wiring is correct. I priced out my little "smart bone" boards, and it was like $6 with two day turnaround. Would take me almost as long to mill six of them myself and I'm just doing single layer boards. So the rumor is that you can gently carve off a solder mask with an endmill. I don't think I'd want to do it, though. With a layer on top of the copper, I couldn't height probe successfully. If the cladding isn't at least 0.2mm thick, it's be pretty dang hard to clear the pads without erasing the 0.035mm foil unexpectedly. A photo-cure epoxy might work with a stencil, though. So that's why I haven't explored doing it personally - it seems unlikely to succeed with my equipment.