Homebrew PCBs

The "Brute" is designed to use a Dremel using carbide PCB drill bits.
(or was your tooling question about what's need to buils it?)

You can use TurboCNC to run the machine. Converting an Excellon drill
file to G code is pretty straightforward and I think there are free
utilities already written to do this.

I built one, and with stainless 1/4-20 threaded rod as lead screw it
seems quite amazing. As a test I jogged back and forth repeatedly
along a 4" length, measuring travel with a digital caliper, and it
came up as 4.000" every time. The caliper will resolve .001" so the
repeatability and accuracy of the machine is quite good. If you jog it
.001 that's what the caliper shows.

With your building skills it would be a piece of cake. But it does
take some time.

regards,
Grant

--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, Adam Seychell <a_seychell@y...>
wrote:
> Ed Okerson wrote:
> >> Maybe but its a matter of pure luck that any given person comes
across
> >> one of these small drill machines your talking about. And spending
> >> $1000's on a brand new drill machine is just not an option.
Building a
> >> CNC machine from scratch is a mammoth task compared, to building a
> >> manual drill press.
> > 
> > 
> > That is simply not true.  I built a CNC mill/drill based on the Brute
> > design at www.crankorgan.com and it only took about a week to make
it. 
> > Granted it is not a professional unit, but it is accurate down to
> > 0.00025", plenty good enough for hobby PCB drilling!  It cost
virtually
> > nothing to build, mostly scrap aluminum channel and scrap plastic
blocks.
> > 
> > Ed Okerson
> > 
> 
> They look interesting, but what is used as the linear slides ? How are 
> they attached to the U channel ?
> Is the lead screw standard zinc steel threaded bar or is it  the true 
> thing ?
> It looks like X, Y and Z axis are identically built, with only the 
> length of the Z axis being smaller.
> What CNC software are you using ? Did that take a week to write too ?
> And most important, what is the minimum tooling required to build
one of 
> these ?