Yes, those Burrs (you are calling them diamond cutters) work very
well. I use them for metal machining when I have very small cuts to
make such as this morning. I needed a .050" wide slot by .15" long in
brass - total depth of cut .280". This was for a spring loaded scribe
I am making for the CNC router (Isolation scribing).
Those cutters would work great for cutting the PCB to size, but so
far, I have not made any provisions for dust collection on the
machine. The drilling chips are relatively big and I am not worried
about them getting airborn. The chips (dust) from one of those
cutters is certain to be smaller and more easily ingested into the
lungs (of which I have not been to kind too for the last 45 years).
But, if I get to the point of having dust collection, I will be
jumping at the chance to use the CNC router to cut the board to final
size / shape as well.
Hopefully, this week I should be able to do my first real run through
with CNC drilling and isolation scribing/etching. I have a few more
software bugs to fix though so not too sure.
The machine is working good for the most part though. I was machining
some aluminum with it the other day - cut much better than I
expected. That little R/C car motor that I am using for the spindle
seems to have enough power ;-)
> Even just because of the dust i would use a shear. I guess if one
has a
> CNC those diamond pattern routers would work fine (i think PCB
houses use
> them almost always for outline routing). With sufficient dust
extraction
> that should work well, and would be very precise too. I've seen
those bits
> on ebay.
>
> ST
>