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Milled board

A project log for Soldering Iron Ring Light

Light integrated into soldering iron to illuminate what I'm soldering, and learn a bit about SMD design and getting PCBs made

linus-dillonLinus Dillon 04/25/2015 at 01:500 Comments

My first try at this was to mill a PCB using my kit-build CNC machine. Now this is a VERY basic machine (from the original http://www.mydiycnc.com kickstarter) with a Dremel fitted to it. I have successfully milled a through-hole single sided board on it before, but it was close to being borderline. Anyway, I went through the same process this time (EagleCAD, exporting via the PCB plugin, then into EMC2). I did use a 10 degree v-bit this time rather than an end-mill hoping to get finer detail this time.


I'm afraid however that it didn't go well. As you can see from the pictures, the milled lines tended to wander a bit - it looks like runout in the Dremel is the main issue, although there is also a small amount of play in the overall machine too. The first try was not quite deep enough to cleanly mill through the copper. I repositioned and tweaked the z-axis home and tried again, but this time it got only a short way before the v-bit tip broke! Clearly I'm doing something wrong (maybe dropping the milling speed would help?), OR this machine simply isn't up to this (+/- 1mm or more wobble at the bit could doom it entirely).

Anyway, onto plan B: getting it professionally made.

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