Homebrew PCBs

I bought my drills from ebay. There were a couple of sellers with new
and used PCB drills. I could get pretty much the dimensions i needed.
Can't comment on your sizes because i'm not prepared to convert inches
to mm or even less look up what these weird # sizes equate to but i
can tell you i mostly use 0.8 mm drills for just about all small parts
and 1mm or 1.2mm for sockets and larger transistors. I also have one
3.5mm drill for mounting holes.

BTW. a useful tool to make is a setting tool for the little plastic
rings on PCB drills. This makes it considerably quicker to chuck them
to the right height.

ST

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 6:15 PM, jerrytr2.com <jerry@...> wrote:
> --- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "jerrytr2.com" <jerry@...>
> wrote:
>> *** Just got back from the kitchen sink.  The board is GORGEOUS.
>
> *** And yesterday I ran to the store and bought the dremel drill
> press attachment to drill the holes.  Worked great!  Stuffed the
> board last
> night, and it just worked.  Well, except that my TO3 transistor got
> too hot.  Gonna have to heatsink that thing, which is going to pork
> things up considerably.  Or I might mount it remotely on a heatsink
> or on the back of the chassis....
>
>   This morning, I spent a bit of quality time with various
> components and a dial caliper.   Thinking about drill bits here.  My
> quarter watt resistors have .018" dia leads, augat machine sockets
> have .019" pins, etc etc.
>
>   Yesterday while drilling I noticed that my drill bits were mostly
> way too small or way too big.  I had purchased an assortment from
> Jameco.  Most small parts have lead diameters between .018 and .040.
> And Jameco only lists two drill sizes in that range - #75 at .021 and
> #59 at .040.  Jameco's prices are reasonable at less than $2 a bit.
>
> Digikey OTOH has the same limited stock, and their prices are through
> the roof.  $8/bit and up.  They have priced themselves out of the
> Jerry drill bit market.
>
> Harbor Freight has an assortment of 50 bits for $10.  Has anybody
> bought this one?  Are the sizes useful?
>
>
>                              - Jerry Kaidor
>
>
>