Homebrew PCBs

I think you need a 3W UV laser to ablate copper.

I saw a UV laser at Fabtech with galvos in an enclosed case.  No moving
parts.  It was sweet.  They guy put a pen in and typed up my name and it
engraved it in about 3 seconds.  Super clean not like CO2 cuts.  I can't
remember if the machine was $30,000 or if that was just the diode without
the galvos.

http://www.lpkfusa.com/microline/pl_u.htm
uses 3W UV laser does 1mil traces/1mil spacing
Costs $220,000


http://www.lpkfusa.com/microline/pl_s.htm
uses 10W YAG laser
costs $120,000

If you can get the UV to fire safely, I sell you a XY overhead complete
gantry for ~$1200 with motors and control card.  This gantry is currently
used on my 50W CO2 laser (which copper doesn't absorb).






On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 8:38 AM, lmri2071 <lmri2071@...> wrote:

>
>
>
> I had this idea about seven years ago. But at that time the Laser Diodes
> of 405nm were impossible to obtain (USD$4000). Since last year, I have
> taken this idea again, because now one can buy those laser diodes around
> USD$40 (85mW) in eBay. I saw in web (youtube) some germans guys
> experimenting with this, but I have not see the results. Also I read
> about a french engineer who made some experiments with UV LEDs coupled
> with a fibre optic. I have a Polish paper which expose the use of this
> idea to get 50um (2 mils) clear cut beatiful traces, but they use very
> expensive optics ( telecentric lenses, glavos and others things which
> are too costly for the DIYer ).
>
> Now I struggling with optics. When I get some control of the LASER beam
> waist, I gonna put my laser module in a CNC engraver.
>
> There are anyone working on that in this group?
>
> 
>


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