Homebrew PCBs

This stuff is TOUGH! I scored with a utility knife, through the 
copper and well into the fiberglass. When I bent it over the edge of 
a table, it bowed a lot before finally breaking.

If you know of anybody in the printing business (offset presses and 
such) or at a copy shop, some of these places have big guillotine 
paper cutters. I have access to such a shop and worked it out with 
the operator that when it comes time to change the knife blade (over 
time it gets nicked and leaves rough edges in the stacks of paper) I 
get to cut a few boards. The cutters have a minimum cut size (usually 
the size of a business card), but generally can do a good job. It 
takes 2 or 3 tries (sometimes it helps to flip the board over) but 
the cuts are clean.

Be careful of the glass fibers that are thrown around when breaking a 
board. It gets into your skin and itches a lot. Be sure you're not 
doing this on the kitchen table or next to the bed (!) (for those of 
us in small apartments, or such...)

Cheers,
Dave

-=-=-=-

>One hack is to score it with a utility knife.  Go over both front and back
>several times with a great deal of pressure.  Then lay the score line over
>the edge of a table and bend it.  It's not nice, but it does work.
>
>Although, for 15 bucks, you can buy some nice aviation snips that'll do the
>job in a quarter of the time with a tiny fraction of the effort.
>
>Sent from my iPad
>
>On 2011-11-16, at 5:36 PM, alan00463 <alan00463@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>I have no shear. I have no vise. What can I use to cut PCB material? I'll
>start with 6" X 12" X 0.062" SINGLE SIDED PC BOARD.
>Is there a hack for cutting straight lines on this material
>without buying a shear?