Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Hardware

Build Your Own PCB Milling Machine 210

Posted by timothy from the for-large-values-of-it dept.
mwandel writes "It used to be that one off amateur printed circuit boards were all etched in acid. A lot of companies nowadays use a special form of milling machine to mill them out of solid copper clad circuit boards. This guy Jonathan Westhues built his own PCB milling machine out of various parts, with a laminate trimmer as the milling head. Lots of other neat hacks on his Webpage as well."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Build Your Own PCB Milling Machine More

Build Your Own PCB Milling Machine

Comments Filter:
  • ...is the key word.

    Whatever happened to the guys that were going to print out boards on inkjet printers?

    Also since these would be milled, they would be called MCB's. Get it straight.

    Milling machines, while a marvel of modern technology in their own right, cannot create multi-layered circuit boards, unless you ignore the obvious extra steps involved. Sounds like overkill, and a solution looking for a problem.

    • Re:Amateur (Score:4, Informative)

      by bjcubsfan ( 471972 ) <bjpotter@ g m a i l . com> on Sunday March 30, 2003 @09:15PM (#5628818) Homepage
      They're still called PCBs even if they are milled. It's a naming convention that has stuck. It is in no way incorrect.

      Also, It is not difficult to make a double sided PCB with a milling machine. There are many times in circuit board design that you don't need more than one or two layers. This is a solution that solves a lot of smaller problems every day.

      • Re:Amateur (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Degrees ( 220395 )
        I used to work at a factory that made these, and the primary owner was an electrical engineer. He used to point out that really, we should call them PWB - Printed Wiring Boards. They were after all, just wiring, not actual electronic cicuits.

        Once in a great while, we got a board with a funny pattern for some traces, and he pointed out those were actual circuitry. He said that at high enough frequencies, an engineer could play with the trace pattern and fiddle with impedence or frequency attenuation.

        Las

    • Re:Amateur (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Also since these would be milled, they would be called MCB's. Get it straight. "

      Yeah and traditional boards are ECBs right?

      "Milling machines, while a marvel of modern technology in their own right, cannot create multi-layered circuit boards, unless you ignore the obvious extra steps involved."

      Yeah and etching a board obviously couldn't either, could it??

      Troll alert!

    • Re:Amateur (Score:5, Interesting)

      by uglomera ( 138796 ) on Monday March 31, 2003 @12:31AM (#5629596)
      Milling machines are not an overkill or a solution for amateurs, they are a very good solution for inexpensive prototypes or production needed in small-mid volume.

      Acid etching produces a functional board, but it simply does not look good, and you can't make 100 boards that are exactly alike. The lines are almost straight, the edges are not perfect, and if you are on a contract to deliver a product, this is not an option. Examples of where a milling machine is one of the best solutions: a university lab where the researchers are under government/industry contract and are supposed to deliver a working prototype or a small business with a military contract (small volume products).

      I worked for a startup company for a while, and part of my job was to work on a QuickCircuit [t-tech.com] milling machine, and that thing had milling bits that were 4 mils thick (comparable to hair). You can hardly reach this precision with acid etching. I also adapted the machine to dice wafers, which replaced the company's practice of using an exactoknife :)

      If you are in the IC design business, testing cheaply is of primary importance. You can get a full setup for producing boards for less than $10K. How's that compared to billions of $$$ for setting up an IC production plant? And if you are in the RF design business, you need the precision so that a crappy board does not screw up your high-frequency measurements.

      Of course, milling is no option for producing high-volume PCBs with many layers, but don't think that ASUS spent months to design such a board to test their new motherboard design. First they have to verify that design works, which is done with a cheap PCB design, one that would hook up the ICs. Only after that stage can the final PCB design begin.

      As long as the Z80 or 68K processors are still in use, simple PCBs will be here, and we need a cheap and fast way to design and make them.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @09:07PM (#5628786)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Great idea there, I went to the mirror and was able to read it with pictures and all. I bookmarked his site though and will check back tomorow as it looks pretty interesting.

  • milling machines are cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zymano ( 581466 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @09:07PM (#5628792)
    If you type in "home built milling" at google you'll get an interesting type of mill called a CNC mill that is made out of regular Dremel rotary drills and computers. Very cool.

    More people need to be able to make their own parts out of steel and plastic. The problem is cost. It's curious that a country that is inventive as ours doesn't have some type of affordable CNC(computer numeric computation) milling machine.

    Affordable metal cutting lathes are expensive too.

    • Affordable metal cutting lathes are expensive too.
      Huh?
    • CNC == Computer Numeric(al) Control
    • I admit that there are some CNC machines that have more degrees of freedom, but for sign cutters and circuit boards, it's just a large plotter.

      I'm surprised that as the old school plotters get decomissioned, more people haven't snatched 'em up.
      • I'd love to get one, if I knew where I could find one.

        I've got the feeling all the old flatbed plotters were dumpstered many years ago.

        • Re:It's a plotter (Score:2, Interesting)

          by modecx ( 130548 )
          On the contrary, large flatbed plotters are pretty popular for sign cutting, routing, etc. I used to work at a large custom print company, and we had a couple WILD plotters hooked up to a Xenix server.

          At the time I left, they had 2 Zund tables, complete with conveyors, automatic sheet feeders, roll feeders, with a nifty camera hooked up to the cutting head that would track 1/4" dots on the media and compensate for stretching/shrinking that is common with the 3M vinyl that we used.

          A while back I was looki
          • Yeah, I forgot about the monster cutting-plotters (I worked in a sign-shop for a while too).
            I was referring to the old table-top flatbed A and B size pen-plotters - the ones that either held only one pen, or some of the fancy ones that had a carousel of 4 or 6.
            Last one I saw was at a ham-fest several years ago... think they had it for $20 and no-one bought it.
            At the time, the idea of making a PCB mill out of it never even crossed my mind.

      • Scanner guts...r (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cr0sh ( 43134 )
        Scanners are essentially a flatbed plotter with only one axis of travel - cheap USB scanners can be had for under $30.00, buy a couple to get a two axis system, third axis could be a simple solinoid config. There would still be a lot of work left to do to get it all to go together, but it could be done (whether you stuck with the USB stuff, or just kept the stepper motor and drivers, then added you own custom interface). Also, back in the early 1980's there was a BYTE magazine article on building your own p
        • Check out "The Robot Book" by Richard Pawson (around 1985). About half the book covers various projects made from Lego and Fischertechnik (aluminium extrusions). Among other things, there's an XY plotter, a 3-axis robot arm, several walking (on 2 or 4 legs) robots, and a card dealer.

          One of the coolest things was a controller called the Beasty that would control up to 8 R/C servos, allowing fine control of various devices. I even wrote a Z80 assembler program on a Sinclair Spectrum to drive the Beasty via

    • Re:milling machines are cool (Score:4, Interesting)

      by UniverseIsADoughnut ( 170909 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @09:49PM (#5628940)
      ""The problem is cost. It's curious that a country that is inventive as ours doesn't have some type of affordable CNC(computer numeric computation) milling machine.""

      You underestimate what it take to make a good mill. A none computer controlled Bridgeport Vertical Mill will set you back 16 grand depending on how you option it. There are not a highvolume thing. It takes massive peices of perfectly machined metal to do this. Theres a lot to it. You can't just cheapen one up without it becomeing well cheap.

      Adding Computer Numeric Control is not so easy. Though i'm sure if someone wanted to do it it would not be impossible. But there is a heck of a lot to G code (what runs CNC's). You'll be working the bugs out for a while. And then you still need a CAD program to pop out G code, thats a few grand there at the cheapest level. Granted if you want to spend a lot of time you can code it by hand. Many machinist do much of the G code by hand, but they do that everyday.

      There are reasons CNC's aren't cheap, Mainly the fact everything about them is expensive. If you ever get to see a real high end CNC mill or lathe going you will understand why the cost $100K to a million bucks. Watching one at work will blow your mind. Especialy if you stick your head in it.

      • Re:milling machines are cool (Score:5, Interesting)

        by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Sunday March 30, 2003 @11:02PM (#5629264) Homepage
        Good try, but not quite. If all you want to do is mill simple things and etch circuit boards with it, it's not that hard. There are a few little bits, but you can build a good one for under $100 (plus steppers, etc). It would cost less if you already have some of the stuff around.

        As for CNC not being easy, it's not easy, but it's not impossible. Especially if all you're doing is PCBs. How expensive is the software? Dirt cheap. You can use the free version of TurboCAD to make your parts. You export them as DXF files. Then the program that controlls your motors can convert that to gcode for you (or you can use another piece of software). You can get free DXF->GCODE converters that work quite well. You can also get free software to run your motors, or nice commercial programs for $20.

        It's true that a "real" CNC machines start in the 10s of Ks, but you can make one that will do just about everything a hobbiest will ever need for just a little. For more information see my other posts to this discussion, or see John's [crankorgan.com] website.

        • I wasn't talking about making PCB's. The person was talking about CNC's and didn't refer to as just for PCBs. For the purpose of just PCB's one could probably just by a router carving table. They work much the same as these types of machines.
        • Well, it really depends on what sort of precision you need. You're really comparing a cadallac to a geo metro here! :-).

          For those wondering, a milling machine is like a drill press, only the part can be positioned accurately relative to the spinning metal cutter, and the cutter and head is designed to take side loads as well as axle load encountered in drilling. In all machine shops, calibration marks are in increments of 0.001", or 0.01mm. A human hair is usually 0.003", and most skilled operators can
        • I read the links over at crankorgan [crankorgan.com] and note he's come up with a nice homebrew CNC machine. Note.. if you are gonna brew your own, you might wanna check out any tossed copy machine, printer, or old 5 inch floppy drives. You would be surprised at the wealth of motors, gears, shafts, whatever, you will find in one of those big clunkers! ( Especially those with those big collator bins. ). You not only get the motors, but with a lot of old machines, they were made before everything went ASIC and you can pr
    • What would be perfect is if there were places where you could rent time on a CNC mill, sort of like kinko's for engineers.

      I make about 20 PCBs a year (with FeCl3 etching). It would be nice to just go into the store CD and blank copper clad board in hand and rent the machine for an hour for $50-$100 and make 5 boards.

      Since the boards are generally all different or at most 2 copies of a single one, I can't justify spending $80 for each board at a place like PCB express. This is just a hobby after all :
      • Check out a local key or engraving store. Nowadays, even a small one will often have a computer-controlled engraving machine. The depth and/or breadth of cutting will probably mean that you will have to buy your own milling bits, but these things still appear to be able to handle cutting traces in copperclad.

        As for drilling the PCB holes, I found that a good set of second-hand carbide bits, a dremel drill press, and a thin center punch could provide nearly perfect results. You *MUST* center-punch with

      • What would be perfect is if there were places where you could rent time on a CNC mill, sort of like kinko's for engineers.

        Try your local high school or middle school industrial technology teacher. I betcha you could work a deal where you could use their equipment if you can provide something of value to them in return, other than money (although a few bucks for the budget never hurts). Most valuable is your time and expertise. Least valuable, most likely to get you a no answer is anything that is going
        • I'm surprised to hear high schools have equipment like a CNC. When I was in HS, the most advanced equipment our metal shop had was a bandsaw and lathe. I didn't even know a CNC existed until University. While I was there, they shut down all the tech labs and replaced them with computer labs to offer courses like "aldus pagemaker" and "corel draw". I thought it was an incredibly stupid thing to do.

          I didn't know high schools still had any tech equipment at all.

          Jason
          ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]

    • Re:milling machines are cool (Score:5, Informative)

      by madfgurtbn ( 321041 ) on Monday March 31, 2003 @01:00AM (#5629711)
      See www.desktopcnc.com for a comparison of various tabletop cnc machines. Depends on your personal definition of "affordable", but there are some small machines $3k

      I don't think you could reach .0001 tolerance on those low-end machines, but most of them would get close to .001, which is plenty for most hobbyist projects.
  • /. really needs a mirroring system or at least ask guys like this and/or give them fair warning to prepare.

    2 comments so far and its already down. What's the point? The article might as well be yanked all together.
    • Speaking of things slashdot needs, I have an idea for an improvement to the moderation system: flag moderations. These would be like the normal moderations (eg, Troll, Funny), but they wouldn't affect the score of the comment in question. People could then change their preferences to change the scores of all the comments the way they wanted. This would be useful for knocking comments like yours down to -1, since I would set my preferences to subtract a lot of points from anthing with a "Slashdotted Already"

  • There are easier ways (Score:5, Informative)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @09:12PM (#5628808)
    Seems like a lot of trouble to go to when it's pretty cheap to get small-quantity custom boards done [pcbexpress.com].
    • that looks awesome! know of a simliar place for plastic molding? :D been trying to get a product made forever ... :D
      • know of a simliar place for plastic molding?

        Yep: These guys [quickparts.com] will do small SLS parts for $N, where N is in the mid-hundred range.

        SLS is great for checking fit and function of your design; less useful for actual structural use. They (or other places) can however take an SLS part and form an RTV mold around it, from which they can cast urethane parts. For quantities less than 1000 pieces it's a lot more cost-effective than having an injection-molding tool made up.

    • Re:There are easier ways (Score:4, Informative)

      by lirkbald ( 119477 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @10:33PM (#5629153)
      A couple others to try:

      ExpressPCB [expresspcb.com]- Has an offer that will let you make 3 3.8"X2.5" 2-sided boards for about $60, as well as a more general off that's not too much more pricey. They have their own board design software you have to use, which is a bit primitive but adequate for hobbyist use, though it's a problem if you were to ever want someone else to make your boards.

      Advanced Circuits [4pcb.com]- Has a deal to make 2-sided boards for $33/ea, min qty 3. These boards have a solder mask, which is required for dealing with fine-pitch SMT parts, and makes your board all pretty and professional-looking ;-)

      Sierra Proto Express [sierraprotoexpress.com]- Has a similar deal to Advanced Circuits, but also has a good price to make four-layer boards.

      Some general notes- I've used the first two, and it worked alright, but I haven't tried the third one. The latter two require Gerber and Excellon data- this is the standard format for PCB plotting and drilling information information. Essentially any board layout software should be able to generate them. However, it is not trivial to figure out what precisely to send the board manufacturer- you can't just blindly trust your layout software to do the Right Thing. I keep meaning to write a little tutorial on my hard-won knowledge about this, but I've never gotten around to it :-/

      • Re:There are easier ways (Score:2, Informative)

        by anubi ( 640541 )
        I do all my proto work through Advanced Circuits. [4pcb.com]

        I use PADS PCB ver 7.0 for DOS to generate the Gerber photoplot, aperture, and excellon drill files. Once I have the fileset intact, I zip them and email my rep ( in my case, Anthony Estes ) over at Advanced Circuits with my zipfile package as an attachment, and about a week later I get a large padded envelope in my mailbox with my boards in it. Every one has been exactly what was ordered. Excellent workmanship. And on time.

        Getting started is the har

      • All of those run about 80 bucks minimum order. More than I want to pay for one or two boards.

        Now, Olimex [run.to] will do up a single small double sided, masked and silk screened board for 26 bucks. They'll panelize it for free too, so you can use a decent free tool like Eagle, which is limited in the PCB size, and still get the whole board.

        Just be sure to have them ship it via regular mail, otherwise UPS will charge you about 75 bucks brokerage fees for bringing it into the country.

    • Re:There are easier ways (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ratso Baggins ( 516757 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @10:57PM (#5629246) Homepage
      You may be missing the point, he machine's turn-around-time is 1 hour(ish) the best you can get is 1 day from the fab co's. Secondly @$80 a board you will quickly pay for the milling machine, if you have need for it. I like it because @ 1:00am when I'm ready to do the board - I can... and how many things geek are done "because I can"?

      Granted it's only double sided - but at that it's wonderful. Wow, no more chemicals! I've always-forever wanted one of these but the pro milling machines are out of my league.

      • I acknowledge the "just because" aspect. However, once you've milled the board, you still have the hole drilling and through-hole plating (or little wire-stub soldering, if that's your method) to do. Not to mention the solder masking and silkscreening that can be had with the commercial product. More power to those who like to do the entire job themselves, but I'll stick with getting my custom boards done by a board house. I'm far too lazy to do otherwise :-).
    • Anyone else interested in hobbyist-level services for prototyping and whatnot: pick up a copy of "Nuts And Volts" magazine. They have tons of ads for things like board houses, plastic parts making, etc. You might also take a look at "Robot Builder's Sourcebook" for lists of sources for just about anything electronic or mechanical that you can imagine.

  • Do It Right - John Has Great Plans (Score:5, Informative)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Sunday March 30, 2003 @09:18PM (#5628829) Homepage
    note: the site is down, so I'm going off a mirror of the front page of the site, sorry if I get things wrong

    If you want to build a machine to mill circuit boards, do it right. Build a machine designed by John C Kleinbauer [crankorgan.com]. The Brute [crankorgan.com] is designed to make PCBs cheaply. I recently bought some of John's plans (well worth it) and they are quite nice. They are very well done, easy to understand, don't need things that are exotic and hard to get (if your in the US). He includes a booklet on how to mill PCBs with The Brute, or you can order it seperatly. He even maintains and activly participates on his forum, Hardware Store CNC [ezboard.com].

    I've started to build a brute, and things are going pretty well considering I'm doing this in my spare time with only some time to work on it. If you guys are like me (I really like to build things with my hands) this is a ton of fun. I can't wait to get it running so that I can make PCBs, robot parts, a wooden clock [woodenclocks.co.uk] and more.

    • Kleinbauer claims 3 mil accuracy whereas pcb lines
      can be 5 mil wide or even smaller. I am saying this
      because I had a design which needed to have ultra
      thin traces and have them straight (low capacitance
      and inductance were key). This method just isn't
      accurate enough for the most demanding PCBs.
      • If you really want controlled impedance, then you probably don't want a double-sided board with no soldermask anyways. So lets put some realistic expectations on it: its sounds like it doesn't take much longer than wire-wrapping a "breadboard" like what you see in the linked article first attept at controlling the stepper motors, but is of higher quality. If you are doing 10 of them, it is surely faster too. Compare the white plastic wire wrap to the board he put in the junction box. Its for hacking low
    • Dude -- that's awesome! I've wondered off and on about what I'd need to do to make a little CNC machine to cut inlays and fret slots into guitar fingerboards, and this might help out....

      Steve

  • It's a shameless plug, but.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Arethan ( 223197 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @09:21PM (#5628838) Journal
    My dad wrote some CNC control software that would work quite well for this application. It's designed to run anything from table top machines (such as this) all the way up to large scale CNC retrofits, where the iron is good but the control is shot. Very competitively priced as well. Even has a free demo version with no time limit for those that want to check it out. Requires a dos based machine to run it on though. FreeDOS works fine, of course so does MS-DOS.

    I'm sure this will kill his pipe, but here is a link: www.cnczeus.com [cnczeus.com]

    It's listed in google as well, so you may want to check that out if/when the pipe goes dead from the load. :)
    • I absolutely have to put in a plug for TurboCNC.

      It really works on machines down to 486-SX33, it has a HUGE and growing user base and support network, it is actively being developed (version 4 almost out!). Best of all, it is free. As in, you can download a the full working program and use it as much as you like. If you want the source code, it's $20. That's a much better deal than any other functional CNC program out there, and you think you'll ever see the source?

      EMC is out there, but...forget it. It's

  • Acid etching is nearly extinct (Score:4, Interesting)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @09:29PM (#5628863) Homepage
    Good article for those that don't already have access to PCB milling equipment. There really is no reason to do the old-school etching method anymore, in fact, I don't even know any hobbyists that do that anymore. Milling equipment can be found, borrowed, or made pretty easily these days. I've even seen a working setup made from Lego Mindstorms and a cordless Dremel! Hey, it works and beats the heck outta the mask-and-acid roll of the dice method.

    • There really is no reason to do the old-school etching method anymore, in fact, I don't even know any hobbyists that do that anymore. ... beats the heck outta the mask-and-acid roll of the dice method.

      I don't know any hobbyists who do this either but a former employer still etches photoresist boards in ferric chloride. The techs call it ferrocious chloride and despise building boards. The ferric chloride is a hazmat and everything exposed to it's fumes, rusts. If you spill any on your clothes, toss 'em
      • Etching photoresist and a copper board are rather different. Copper boards can do with only a small channel routed/etched to isolate the trace. Photoresist etch you really need to etch everything (either the positive or negative image of the mask). Photoresist isn't hard to etch. I think you can do it in pretty simple solutions. (We do it in a normal basic solution for positive photoresist.) It's the SIO2 we have to use hazardious stuff for. (We use HF which is very nasty stuff to come in contact wit

  • Electronics Enthusiasts... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kevin Burtch ( 13372 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @09:35PM (#5628891)
    It seems dabbling in electronics is a dying hobby for the younger crowds... I hope projects like this spawn new curiosity and interest.

    For those new to this hobby... here are some publications that could be of great value to you:
    http://www.nutsvolts.com/
    http://www.circui tcellar.com/
    http://www.poptronics.com/

    Anyone know of any others?

    • Re:Electronics Enthusiasts... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @09:57PM (#5628975) Journal
      How about sources for new/surplus components?

      http://www.goldmine-elec.com/
      http://www.alltro nics.com/
      http://www.allcorp.com/
      http://www.new ark.com/
      http://www.jameco.com/

      Try to never buy from Radioscrap. Overpriced and crap quality...

      I've ordered from Alltronics before. They have a $15 minimum order, and sometimes an order may be delayed if something you requested is out of stock. They answer your e-mails rather quickly, though.

      Jameco also sells the seemingly elusive PCI prototyping cards [jameco.com], though they're pricey ($70). Anyone know another supplier of these? (They're also good if you're looking to pick up a 266MHz PII motherboard for $20)

      =Smidge=
      • Jameco also sells the seemingly elusive PCI prototyping cards, though they're pricey ($70).

        I've seen them at Fry's...they're even more expensive there, but if you need one right away, that's another option. (Assuming you have a Fry's nearby, of course...)

    • As one of the members of the younger crowd of which you speak, I'd like to express my own (personal) opinion.

      I'm certainly curious, and the multiple articles about home-made tools for dabbling with electronics certainly contribute to my curiosity. The problem, however, is two-fold. One, some of this is rather daunting for most beginners. I see some of the talk about people on here building their own circuitboards and such, and I'm a little intimidated, frankly. Two, I wouldn't know why to dabble in ele

      • Re:Electronics Enthusiasts... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Kevin Burtch ( 13372 ) on Monday March 31, 2003 @12:18AM (#5629551)
        Well, there used to be Electronics Now and Popular Electronics (which merged, and became Poptronix), but the printed publications are gone (to my knowledge). You may be able to find all the old issues at your local library... although ones over 1 year old may be only on microfische.

        As much as I'm annoyed with Radio Shack for turning into a toy and appliance store (they used to be an electronics hobbyist store), they do still have a handfull of items for the electronics tinkerer.
        I'd recommend picking up all of their Engineer's Mini-Notebooks to start with.
        I'd also recommend checking out some of their X-in-one kits... I think they have a 300-in-one now (I hope they haven't stopped making these).
        They have all kinds of example circuits that you can make by hand wiring (read: no soldering) the circuits together - and some of the examples are kind of cool for a beginner. I started with a 150-in-one kit (it was the biggest at the time) way back when I was a teen.

        After this... if you want to get into digital electronics, pick up the TTL Cookbook and CMOS Cookbook by Sam's.
        If you want to get into audio electronics, pick up the Audio IC OP-Amp Applications (also by Sam's).
        If you're a musician, there's a VERY cool one called Electronic Projects for Musicians by Craig Anderton. Use this one with the above audio book to come up with some really cool guitar effect "pedals".

        I hope this helps!
        • If you're a musician, there's a VERY cool one called Electronic Projects for Musicians by Craig Anderton.

          I second this recommendation. The second project I ever built, and the first board I ever etched was his four channel mixer. The author does a very good job at making the projects inviting to beginners.

          Also, if anybody in the Sin Lab down at WPI happens to be reading this, I want my copy back!
      • I am an old-school electronic engineer, I loved to play with electronics already in primary school. The truth is, the bar has been raised considerably nowadays. The entry into electronics has been made way too fucking high with SMD devices. They are totally unsuitable for home/hobby experiments and prototyping, they are way too small for most people to solder (without a microscope) and the PCBs are just impossible for a home enthusiast to construct.

        Moreover, interfacing computers has become much more compl
  • Opensource Hardware!!!

  • Useless (Score:3, Informative)

    by tftp ( 111690 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @09:42PM (#5628917) Homepage
    I can't get to the site (slashdotted). But I used one of such machines. Nowadays they are absolutely, unconditionally useless. They can't make the fine traces that are required for modern chips. Instead, it is cheaper now to order your PCBs from a board house (such as Advanced Circuits). $30 per board is not that expensive.

    • Re:Useless (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MBCook ( 132727 )
      You can make a very nice machine [crankorgan.com] for not that much money that has a very nice accuracy. You could do surface mount stuff with it. That said, how many hobbiests base their projects mostly on 88 pin TQFPs? And once you build your machine, all it costs you is a little time and the blank PCBs. That's alot less than $30 a board, especially if you are going to make 10 of 'em.
      • Yes, you can make the machine, no problem with that. But the resulting PCB is garbage. There are many problems with this method. As I already said, small trace/space is out of question. Then you have to have very flat sheet of material, or else the tool either cuts air, or dives too deep into the fiberglass (and breaks). You have to have a set of tools as well, and they don't come free (or even cheap), and they break often. Also, fiberglass is a very tough material to cut, it dulls blades very quickly. Also
      • If you thought the 88-pin TQFP's were bad... try some BGA's. The higher integration of some chips, like the new system-on-a-chip ones, make the actual design a lot friendlier to the amateur... But they are almost all in BGA packages.

        Thankfully, the pin pitch is often a little bit easier to deal with, so it's not QUITE as difficult for making boards.... As long as you're willing to make multilayer boards.

        The problem is SOLDERING the damn things! The balls are UNDER the package, facing the board, wit

    • Re:Useless (Score:3, Interesting)

      by theLOUDroom ( 556455 )
      But I used one of such machines. Nowadays they are absolutely, unconditionally useless.

      Not true. I have also used such machines. They are actually very useful. Yeah you can't make a new motherboard for your PC with them, but for making quick prototypes they are great. You get your board the same day, and if you made any mistakes, you can fix them the same day and make another board, you don't have to spend time waiting for someone else to do things, the mail, etc.

      As far as SMT goes, they can handle
  • At the risk of sounding like an idiot, how exactly do you get the electrically conductive metal in the etching?

    • You buy the board that way from any real electronics parts supplier (read: probably not Radio Shack).

      The boards are fiberglass (or fibreglass if you're in the UK), with copper cladding on one or both sides.

  • Recursive construction (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FTL ( 112112 ) <slashdot@neil.fras[ ]name ['er.' in gap]> on Sunday March 30, 2003 @10:18PM (#5629088) Homepage
    The best thing about this milling machine is that it built itself. The first version [mosascii.com] was controled by electronics on a breadboard. The second version [mosascii.com] uses much more sophisticated electronics on a PCB that had been milled by the first version of the machine. That is unbelievably elegant.

  • I used a small CNC miller to produce two complex alumnium plates that I used to produce a winch. It was complete overkill, but I was bored, and it did a very good job.

    It had dodgy software and the sheet I was using was too large (X and Y) to use in the machine, so I had to make a jig using MDF and steel rod to locate the plate, so that it could be flipped, and the machine used to cut material much bigger than it was designed for.

    The software and PC controlling it was updated last year, and now it can accu

  • Isn't it a salt? (Score:4, Informative)

    by shoppa ( 464619 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @10:25PM (#5629117)
    were all etched in acid

    Isn't Ferric Chloride (the stuff you buy in bottles at Radio Shack, or at least I did when I was a kid) actually a salt? FeCl... looks like a salt to me!

    • Re:Isn't it a salt? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Paul Neubauer ( 86753 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @10:45PM (#5629206)

      Yes, it is a salt. Copper is more reactive than iron, so the etch works by the chlorine trading iron for copper. The "filings" left after etching are the iron that was freed in the reaction.

      Some folks see it anything that 'eats' away at something as being caused by an acid, even if no acid is really involved. Wouldn't it be nice if chemistry was taught? And taught in a way that was effective?

    • There are other etchants, many much, much more effective. Acid/peroxide is one of the cheapest agressive etchants I have ever worked with. I used to mix it up for about $3/gallon (you ALWAYS mix right before you use it, since the peroxide doesn't really like being in contact with acid and dissipates rather quickly). It can take between 5 minutes to a half hour to etch in ferric chloride. Acid/peroxide will do it in 30 seconds to a minute or so, meaning less undercutting, finer traces, less washout, etc.
  • The college I go to has a milling machine. I've milled about 4 boards from it. That would be great if I could just have my own though and use it on my own time. However, could a home built milling machine achieve an accuracy of 10 mills for track width? Also, what software (opensource) could be used? I couldn't imagine a homemade machine achieving the same functionality as a $15,000 device, but if it could, a low cost home milling machine for hobby projects would be a great product.

    Now they just need to ma
    • Read around on John's [crankorgan.com] website. The best machine to make PCBs (according to him) is the one called "the brute". You can get all the software that you need for free. You can use TurboCAD to design the boards, and other free software to etch them. The software that I mention isn't opensource, but I'm sure such software exists. All you really need to design somehting is a CAD program that can output things in DXF format. Or you could be a REAL geek and write the raw GCODE in vi or something.
      • Is there any way to use the machines John creates, (as he's referenced a ton of times in this thread so seems to be reliable), compatible with orcad? For my school's router we use orcad layout plus to build the boards and, honestly, having something I can autoroute with is nice. So is there any way to use the output of layout plus with these machines?

  • UV Light does the trick (Score:3, Interesting)

    by __aafkqj3628 ( 596165 ) on Sunday March 30, 2003 @10:46PM (#5629209)
    Over here, (in school at least) we just print out the circuit diagram onto a transparency sheet (inkjet printer of course) and then just use a UV light to destroy the appropriate parts of the circuit.

    Use some chemicals (stored in a safe location and brewable in your own home) and you've got a nice PCB for you to use.
  • I dont know about milling, but I've got a PCB mining machine right here: a fishing pole dipped in the East River.
  • "In this world, you do not make your own PC boards" - The Art of Electronics, by Horowitz and Hill.

    Realistically, PC boards are made by sending output from a board design program to a service that makes boards. It's reasonably cheap, turnaround is good, and you can get double-sided with plated through holes, which is what you want.

    Toner transfer methods are for people who like looking at their boards under a magnifier and doing rework. Do it yourself photographic methods work better, but few people bo

  • /. a sympatico cable modem. Next time use your head :) - If he caught it in time before his poor innocent home pc burned out he would have changed the ip on dyndns.org... if not you've just used his bandwidth quota for the month.

  • pretty unfortunate (Score:4, Informative)

    by RestiffBard ( 110729 ) on Monday March 31, 2003 @06:08AM (#5630437) Homepage
    This is one of the cooler "News for Nerds" articles I've seen in a while and its completely unreachable at 4 in the morning because of the slashdotting.

    this is no longer humorous. As much as I often enjoy the +4 comments on certain articles reading slashdot is pretty much no longer worth the frustration of not being able to RTFA.

    Can't wait till this article moves down the frontpage.

  • To plot.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by saqmaster ( 522261 )
    This is quite cool.. I wonder if you could hook up a drill to a normal flatbed plotter.. You can find old Roland plotters quite cheap on ebay and places now..

Slashdot Top Deals

HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!

Close