Homebrew PCBs

Hello Nick,

Welcome. Before I started using CNC to drill pcb holes, I came up 
with something that improved my results immensely, but took a bit 
more time, and requires a decent drill press (as one reply mentioned, 
if your drill press goes all over the place as you bring it down, 
you're fighting a losing battle.)

Anyways, here's what I useta do. Use a piece of .100 perfbord UNDER 
the pcb--on the drill table. Then use a dual inline header strip as 
a "fence" to guide the PCB. By using this fence system to control the 
front to back, your eyes only need to determine left and right 
placement. As long as you use a .100 layout, this can be pretty quick.

Start with the FRONTMOST holes in your PCB. This means the "fence" 
will be the farthest away from the bit. Go from left or right and 
when that "row" is drilled pull the header forward one row and repeat.

As I said, moving the header "fence" takes a bit more time than 
without, but the straight even holes are worth it, IMO.

Hope this helps,

Ballendo
 

--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "Nick" <njacovou@o...> wrote:
> Hello everyone.My name is Nick from Sydney Aust. My first post to 
> this group.So this is probably a dumb question to you guys.I have 
> managed to etch my first board after a few failures, but I came up 
> with a real beauty(I think anyway).I drilled a board last week and 
i 
> nearly went blind tryin to line up the bloody drill to the pads.So 
> is there a way i can use a mirror or something to give me a better 
> view of tiny drill to tiny pads. I am using a dremell mounted on a 
> stand .The drilling is easy but lining up whilst looking through 
the 
> magnifying glass is hard.Any tips would be appreciated.Thanks.