I have a pair of them, too, but they don't work very well on 0402s, which account for >90% of the passives on my boards. To be a little more clear, they work to measure the widget but aren't worth a damn placing them. Too many motions to use both. The cleaning service will get the spillage. Eventually.
Ditto that. We had one at my PPoE. I think it was used once. We have one at my CPoE, as well. I don't think it's been used in the five years I've been there, though its supply of copper clad has come in handy.
Much better than nothing at all, which seems to be the trend. 8-(
--sp
-- Best regards, Spehro Pefhany Amazon link for AoE 3rd Edition: http://tinyurl.com/ntrpwu8
I recently tried making a small board with a generic 6040 (real ball screws on all axis and 24K RPM water cooled spindle). I think it will work fairly reliably down to 10 mil lines and and spaces, eventually, once I get more bits**, but the Z direction (flatness) is extremely finicky. Drilling holes is a snap (manual tool changes) and routing, internal cutouts etc. should be fine.
** the script to zero the bit Z (it gingerly goes down until the (non-rotating) tool just kisses the surface of a puck-like probe then retracts with zero set) has a charming bug that causes it to G00 rapid down at several inches per second right into the touch-off surface if a program has been loaded. 8-(I'm not sure the fine fiberglass dust is any more pleasant than FeCl etchant.
There's a free Gerber to isolation G-code program available that seems to work okay. It's a bit clunky getting the bottom layer of a single layer board flipped, but it does that and flips the Excellon file too. It can include code for registration holes for 2-sided boards.
All in all, the PCB house is better and cheaper when you have time.
--sp
-- Best regards, Spehro Pefhany Amazon link for AoE 3rd Edition: http://tinyurl.com/ntrpwu8
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