PCB circuit boards on CNC

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Kayvon
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Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2014 11:46 pm

PCB circuit boards on CNC

Post by Kayvon »

I've been wanting to try making PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards, although these are milled rather than printed) on the Shark for a while now. I've also had a Halloween project I've been meaning to do for a few years. Finally the calendar aligned and I made these.
Programmed microcontrollers
Programmed microcontrollers
Completed spooky eye modules
Completed spooky eye modules
The LEDs (lights) will fade on, blink a few times, then fade out. The idea is to hide them in the yard, bushes, trees, etc. to give the impression of spooky goblins at night.

I cut the traces into the boards, then roughly cut each board on the scroll saw. I didn't care how nice the board shape looked for this project, though I might make that look nice in future projects.

The little chip on each board is a tiny microcontroller--a little smaller than a grain of rice. I could easily have gone for something more reasonably-sized, but I wanted to see if the Shark could produce PCBs with such fine accuracy. It worked well! I'll definitely be doing more PCBs going forward.

Rando
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Re: PCB circuit boards on CNC

Post by Rando »

Cool! Glad you had success. I've gone that route, and also had good luck with a low-powered laser blasting off enamel paint to make a resist layer, then etching those with a mixture of hydrocholoric acid and hydrogen peroxide. Thanks for posting, Kayvon.

Thom
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A proud member of the Pacific Northwest CNC Club (now on Facebook)

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Kayvon
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Re: PCB circuit boards on CNC

Post by Kayvon »

I'm familiar with that approach, though I've never tried it. I've even heard you can get away with simple hydrogen peroxide if you're patient.

As an incidental bonus, I finally figured out how the Save Toolpath Template functions work and found a situation in which they're useful. The turnaround time for PCBs is getting faster, though it's still as time consuming as other CNC projects are during the design phase.

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