Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs
Subject: RE: [Homebrew_PCBs] Re: PCB-CNC Design and other recent discussions
From: "Jan Kok" <kok@...>
Date: 2003-10-05
Thanks to Markus for your excellent description of how to make
multilayer boards, and for your web pages about your through-hole
plating machine.
I also am very interested in the PCB CNC hole-drilling discussion.
Drilling the holes is tedious and difficult to do accurately, so having
a way to do it automatically and accurately would be great. The
CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO list is interesting, but the traffic is overwhelming,
and most of it is not directly related to low-cost PCB drilling.
So, I vote to keep the PCB-CNC discussion right here in this group. It
is definitely ON topic.
Regarding drilling vs. milling, if I had to choose between spending $200
to build a PCB drilling machine and $300 to build a milling machine, I
would go for just the drilling machine. The reasons are that the
drilling machine would take care of 95% of my "needs" (wants) for
automation; I prefer to do chemical etching (much better quality results
in my opinion) instead of milling PCB tracks; if I need to cut out fancy
board shapes, I can get a scroll saw for about $100; and if I want to do
other types of milling, I will probably want a bigger, sturdier machine
than I could build myself.
Cheers,
- Jan
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