I have prototype PCB manufacturing at my work and I'm trying to set up a lower cost facility at home. The pcb drill press we have is a SAKAI (see
Regards, Dean.
What's wrong with Tin snips? :->
I just score the board with a stanley knife and snap it off on the edge of the bench. Easy to do and gives a nice straight edge. Of course you have to leave enough material around the edge. Do this before etching of course, no point etching extra copper if you don't have to.
I drill by hand, don't do enough boards these days to justify a drill press. Design using surface mount and often you can eliminate most of your holes. Sometimes I don't have to drill any holes at all - nice.
Dave :)
Howdy,
I use a full sized pedestal drill with a "PCB drill chuck" from jaycar. stock code td2010 about 9 bucks.
A pedestal drill press from bunnings these days can be had pretty cheap, a LOT less then the $740 aud computronics is asking, also Kalex in Melbourne are an alternative supplier of the Kinston range
After much trial and error, I no longer use clear plastic to print my circuit onto for the UV mask, I print my flipped circuit onto plain paper so that the laser ink is touching the kinston board and expose for longer, doing this I can cleanly etch super fine tracks for smd work down to 5mils. I also built my own UV box, with 15w tubes almost touching, I found the real Kinston box didn't have an even spread of light for super find SMD work
Good luck with the project,
Mark
As for the drill press, a cheaper version of the Dremel tool is available at Bunnings (I think) as well as a drill stand. This is only for high speed drilling of the pcbs, typically 2mm and smaller holes. Tungsten carbide bits are also highly recommended. I also recommend David L. Jones' suggestion in that using SMD components just about eliminates the need to drill holes, with some exceptions of course.
speed
I've tried drilling PCBs (FR4) with my Dremel using HSS drill bits - it works but the speed is too high and I have found that it wears out the drill bits really quickly - they tend to "burn" their way through. Carbide bits may be better. I've resorted to using my bench drill press at it's highest speed (guess speed is about 2000 RPM) with a smaller chuck held in the large chuck, it works fine.
I use the Dremel with a cut off disk for cutting boards to size - beware of the dust.
rob
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