Adam,
I like your drilling machine. If you flipped it over and put an
optical scope and air clamping foot on it you would have almost the
same machine John is referring to. There were several manufacturers
of these machines with the most popular one made by Excellon. It was
a Uni-Drill model 1230. The actually came with a stylus assembly for
template drilling and the optical scope was optional but almost
everyone bought the scope.
I had two of these machines when I first got started. Some shops
still use them today to drill out tooling holes in multilayer panels.
They use a Precise #65 spindle with a variac speed control. You can
still find these machines if you look hard enough but many of them
went to the dump which is a shame.
My favorite scope drill was made by Nawide Machine Tools and is a
model 281. I use two of them, one with a scope and the other one is
setup with a stylus. The reason I like these machines is because they
have a belt drive spindle and are very quiet compared to the Excellon
Uni-Drill.
Two other machines to look for are the Aetna Acrodrill and the
Electro-Mechano scope/stylus machines. I purchased a really nice
Aetna Acrodrill with the scope and stylus at a surplus outlet for
$200 about a year ago. There are machines like this available for
cheap prices now days and they are very accurate and easy to use.
Tom
> I used a PCB drill at one time that had an optical setup, like a
> scope with crosshairs. It had a big "scope" to see the crosshairs
and
> the pad.
> You can do a similar thing by placing a small video camera under
> where the drill bit will do its thing. BY looking a t a video
monitor
> you can precisely position the PCB under the bit.
>
> Even the laser would have to be off-axis and wouldn't be accurate.
> Any pointer located at the top of the PCB would have to be off-axis
> or it would be in the way of the drill.
>
> Nice work.
>
> JOhn M...
> =============