Homebrew PCBs

Thanks to Markus for your excellent description of how to make
multilayer boards, and for your web pages about your through-hole
plating machine.

 

I also am very interested in the PCB CNC hole-drilling discussion.
Drilling the holes is tedious and difficult to do accurately, so having
a way to do it automatically and accurately would be great.  The
CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO list is interesting, but the traffic is overwhelming,
and most of it is not directly related to low-cost PCB drilling.

 

So, I vote to keep the PCB-CNC discussion right here in this group.  It
is definitely ON topic.

 

Regarding drilling vs. milling, if I had to choose between spending $200
to build a PCB drilling machine and $300 to build a milling machine, I
would go for just the drilling machine.  The reasons are that the
drilling machine would take care of 95% of my "needs" (wants) for
automation; I prefer to do chemical etching (much better quality results
in my opinion) instead of milling PCB tracks; if I need to cut out fancy
board shapes, I can get a scroll saw for about $100; and if I want to do
other types of milling, I will probably want a bigger, sturdier machine
than I could build myself.

 

Cheers,

- Jan

 



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