Homebrew PCBs

Hi Adam,
Nice little machine.
How do you keep the drill bit perpendicular (90degrees) to the PCB?

The laser may be a bit too bright after a while. You will probably 
start seeing little spots (hopefully temporarily).

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...
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--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, adam Seychell 
<adam_seychell@y...> wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I've taken some pictures of my new PCB drilling machine, and 
> made them available online at
> http://home.alphalink.com.au/~seychell/drill_MkII.html
> 
> Hope the pictures don't take too long to load.
> 
> The machine has virtually come straight from the workshop 
> and I've yet to use it for PCB production. When I start 
> using it I'll find all the problems and most probably will 
> be making alterations. One feature I'm thinking of adding is 
> laser diode pointer for guiding the hole location on the 
> PCB. I've never fiddled around with visible laser diodes.
> Does anyone know if those cheapy red laser diode modules be 
> any good for this ?
> 
> Adam