Amazing Discovery

tried super glue?

any who, I'd think a "normal" soldering iron where you can turn up the temperature would work better than a metcal

-Lasse

On a sunny day (Fri, 15 Jul 2011 10:41:02 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

I just put the correct tool on the dremel and remove the copper in that location?

5 seconds?

Silastic / Silicone glue has adequate bond strength for most tasks and it will flex rather than fracture with shock/stress When used around copper, the non-acidic stuff (doesn't smell like vinegar) has been called out here many times. Any excess is also dealt with easily.

Is this Larkin's contribution to mankind? Sorta ranks up their with all those other amazing discoveries?!?!

location?

What tool do you use? The ball-end burrs either slide off the copper, or gouge the epoxy-glass. And it's tricky to get the exact border you want, like for controlled-impedance traces.

John

Why do anything more than score the rectangle you wish to remove, peel up a corner, grab with tweezers an pull.

I use a scalpel with a #11 blade. A little more flimsy side to side than an Xacto blade but very controllable. Nice thing too is that since the end dulls first, I snap off the dull area with a pliers. (use safety glasses). Can to this maybe 10 times before it's too short.

Oppie (who started as a technician)

On a sunny day (Fri, 15 Jul 2011 12:41:46 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

location?

Depends a bit on the size and accessibility, probably a big abrasive wheel (I have done that), or one of the fixed small ones, dunno English name for it. I prefer the big wheel if space allows, also use it to make rectangular holes in the plastic boxes I use. You have to gently slide it over the PCB, then sideways to make sharp edges.

If you don't like the idea, don't use it. Stick with dip packages and those white plastic block things from Radio Shack.

John

A little benchtop mill with a 3/16" or 1/4" end mill will make short work of this.

No, but nothing seems to stick to copper. The bottom side of the copper on the board itself has that drecky black oxide treatment so it will stick to the epoxy-glass and not delaminate. Hell on skin effect.

Mine worked fine. The little scored diamonds rubbed right off the board.

Well, I thought it was cool.

What I'm doing is measuring the HFBR time response as a function of optical drive power.

ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/BB_HFBR.JPG

John

When the tip dulls, you can hold the last 1/8" or so of the blade tip with a needle-nose and snap it off - this gives you a fresh corner that will really bite into the copper.

You can do this more than once. ;-)

Have Fun! Rich

Because it doesn't work?

What I used to do is tin the cutout, heat it with a soldering iron, and peel. The iron softens the epoxy enough that the copper will peel without tearing. But that takes too many hands. This new thing is easier.

I just buy x-acto # 16 blades a hundred at a time. I do have a nice Intel ceramic 486DX processor chip that makes a good x-acto blade sharpener.

I started cleaning workbenches for technicians. And fetching them beer from the fridge.

John

Touché, My hat is off to you sir... especially about using the Ceramic package as a blade sharpener . The proto boards I use from Vectorboard peel rather well by my method. Have also done this with FR4 and TG170 production boards. We all have our favorite techniques, so whatever gets the job done

Old trick :-) I have been doing that for years to remove square or circular pads from prototyping boards.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
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yep, the corner of a snapped blade seems to work better than and actual blade I wonder if the geometry is similar to the tools engravers use for metal?

-Lasse

Yeah I used to love bearing down hard on an exacto blade 'til it snapped and shot past my eyeball...

Yeah I used to love bearing down hard on an exacto blade 'til it snapped and shot past my eyeball...

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I've used an xacto retractable

for years to cut PCB runs and floods and have never snapped a blade. But I did buy a plentiful supply of blades back in the 70's when they were all metal. The new ones have a plastic shank and back end and may not be so robust. Art

My vision is sufficiently bad that I do all this sort of stuff through a Mantis viewer. The last serious blood-letting I did was careless application of my immersion blender... almost got a bunch of blood into the whipped cream.

John

Like the one I bought a few days ago?

--
It's easy to think outside the box, when you have a cutting torch.