Transcript:
Hi, everyone, now that. I have a drill attached to my 3d printer and shown cutting acrylic in the previous video. We can do all sorts of stuff with this now so today. I’m going to make my own PCB out of this copper clad laminate board. Well, that’s the plan. Let’s see if it’s possible for this. PCB we’re going to make quite a simple one, but with as many features as we can here, we have a single sided copper clad laminate and for the drill bits we’re going to use an end mill. This is a pack of n. Mills, ranging from 0.8 millimeters to three millimeters in diameter. And as this is going to be quite a simple PCB we’re only going to be using one of these and the smallest one we have, which is 0.8 millimeters in diameter and with this bit, we’re going to engrave the circuit on the copper clad laminate. We’re going to drill the holes we’re going to clear out any copper regions that we don’t need and finally we’re going to cut out the board all with a single and mil, and even though PCB stands for printed circuit board, we’re not going to be printing here. We’re gonna be engraving, so maybe this should be called an ECB to make our PCB we’re going to use a free program called Flat Cam with Flat Cam. You can export your PCB design and import the juror and Exelon Drill files into Flat Cam, which will output them as g-code, and it’s with that G code that we can send to our 3d printers to make our Pcbs. Flat Cam has a range of features and the features we’ll be using in this video. Is the isolation routing. That’s so we can etch out our PCB design on the copper clad we’ll also be using the drill holes, so we’ll be drilling holes within our PCB. We’ll be using the copper clear area, so we’ll be clearing out any unwanted cop that’s left over in our PCB and, Lastly, we’ll be using the board cutout feature, so the board can simply snap out of the larger PCB copper cladding. And here we are in flat Cam. I’ve already gone ahead and imported this demo PCV from Eagle PCB, including the circuit design and the Dru Holes and even though there’s plenty of tutorials online on how to use this program and even a great manual on the flat Cam Org website as well. I’ll quickly show you the options that I’ve changed to get to this position under the options tab for units of selected millimeters and for all of the engraving, so for the PCB design and also for the copper clearing, I’m cutting down to a depth of negative point. One five millimeters. That’s in the z-axi’s, so that’s from the Z home position while the drill bit is traveling, but not cutting. I’ve set it to one millimeter above the PCB for the feed rate. So this is how fast it’s going to cut and move. I’ve set this to 180 millimeters per minute, which equates to three millimeters a second and finally I’ve set the tool diameter to 0.8 millimeters as we’re using a 0.8 millimeter and mil. So there the options that have chosen throughout this operation, except when it comes to cutting and drilling. I’m going down to a depth of negative one point. Eight millimeters as we want to go right through the board for those operations, and that’ll leave us with four g-code files. So we have the PCB g-code. That’s to engrave the circuit design. We have the no copper g-code that’s to clear out any copper within the PCB that we do not wish to keep. We have the drill g-code that’s to drill all the holes and finally the cutout g-code that’s to cut out the perimeter of the board so you could send these files into the 3d printer. One at a time or you can do what? I’ve done and I’ve just copied all of them into one file. This PCB g-code here in the order of the PCB first, then no copper, then drill the holes and finally cut out the board. The only g-code that you do need to modify manually because flat Cam just does not send in a couple of commands that we need to get this to work, right, that first command is m2 1 1 S 0 that’s to disable the software end stops within Marlin because we’re going into the negative territory on the Z Axis by default. Marlin does not allow this. We’ve got to disable the software and stops to allow that, and Lastly, with all the speed commands. So this one here. This F 180 by default, Marlin creates this g-code file with just F 180 there on its own without a G command at the start. Marlin does not like that. It needs to know what that? F Command is for so I’ve just added G 0 to the start of all the F commands, so there’ll be an F command at the start of each of those G codes, just like they’re cutting acrylic video. I’ve got a piece of MDF that stuck down to the bed with double-sided tape That worked quite well on that video, so Ill. Continue that with this one. So the idea here is I’ll be sticking the PCB with double-sided tape directly on top of this sacrificial piece of MDF. So I’m just going to install a couple of pieces of double-sided tape. This tape is quite strong, so I have no worries in using it for this exercise. Peel off the backing from each piece, and lastly, stick the copper clad laminate onto the bed. Just need to install that endmill now into the end of this flexible shaft. Cert, the key under the nut underneath, remove the collet here is the end mill, so the collet. So you have about that much sticking out from the rear to the end of the flexible shaft. Screw the nut back on and tighten that down and just like 3d printing. We want a perfectly flat surface here as we’re only going to be engraving away down to minus 0.15 of a millimeter and as this is a 3d printer, we have these adjustment knobs on either side of the print surface, which makes leveling. Pcb like this quite easy and Lastly, when you’ve done that you can move the printhead to wherever you want. The PCB design to be etched and finally manually home the z-axi’s. So the tip of the end mill is just touching the top of the PCB And just before we begin. Don’t forget to wear your safety gear. I’ll be wearing some safety glasses. Some hearing protection and as this might be making some dust some respiratory protection. [MUSIC] Okay, it’s just finished. That took 20 minutes to complete all the full operations. Let me just vacuum this up first, and we’ll take a closer look. [APPLAUSE] So here’s the completed PCB. Get a good look at that. All the holes seem to have drilled all the way through and the cutout has gone all the way through as well. The PCB must be just held on by those tiny little tabs that flat cam included in the cutout process, so this should. Oh, yeah, just push out now. I’m not sure if you can see that too well. In the camera, there are just a few burrs, just along these tracks on the side here, so I might go over this with a piece of 800 grit, sandpaper, just a light pass to get rid of any burrs that appear on the surface, So I’ve got a piece of 800 grit sandpaper here. I’ll just lightly go over the surface of this just on the edges as well seems to have gotten rid of all those burrs now, but it’s still covered in fine layer of dust. Let me quickly wash this off and come back and show you the finished result. And here it is after about 20 minutes of engraving drilling and cutting out this piece of PCB. And, oh, just some light sanding, of course to get rid of any burrs around the holes and traces we have the completed printed or engraved circuit board. You can see its. Come out quite well having all the no copper or the copper in between all the traces edged away as well will act like a solder mask. You can see all the holes have made it through and you can see the traces on the other other side there if we hold it up to the light. So when designing your PCB, you need to keep in mind. The diameter of the drill bit that you’ll be using to Etch Will engrave the design. So here I used a 0.8 millimeter and milk, which is fine for through-hole or discrete components, but any small surface mount components 0.8 millimeters is just too wide but okay, because places like banggood cell and mill diameters all the way down to zero point four millimeters and with a zero point four millimeter end mill, you could make some fairly high, dense surface, Mount Pcbs and just to see what it’s like with a discrete component inserted into this PCB. I actually do have a pic. 16f The same package that’s used for this demo board. So that’s what it would look like if you started to populate this board from the top and looking underneath. Look where the pins are sticking through and have a look at the land pad area around those pins you can see, there’s plenty of area there for solder to latch onto those legs when making your own. Pcb it’s a good idea to do a continuity test as well. So I have my multimeter here in continuity mode, but just judging just visually looking at this board, there’s not going to be any short circuits because the the no copper and the quite wide drill bit would have certainly taken care of those, but just making sure that there is connection with each track is a task that should be done just to ensure that there are no breaks in the circuits and unfortunately, that’s where I have to end this video, but that wasn’t the plan that was only supposed to be half of the video, In fact, that was supposed to be the quick and dirty way of making a PCB. My proper intention is to use a V bit to be able to issue a the circuit. Circuit design and here is a quite expensive bit that I purchased locally. This cost me. It was twenty Australian dollars from a local CNC online warehouse, and the idea was to use this to make the tracks on a much denser PCB for surface mount components. But unfortunately I came across a problem with the the locking mechanism on the flexible shaft, which means that I can’t use these V bits and let me show you why so here we are back at the 3d printer looking at the end mill inserted into the flexible shaft and even though there’s no play in the X or Y axis. Unfortunately, there is a little bit of play in the z-axi’s this entire assembly, the nut and everything wants to move up and down just slightly within this black housing. And I’ll show you that now. Not sure if you can see that on camera, it’s only a fraction of a millimeter, but that fraction of a millimeter in the z-axis is enough so that if you’re trying to edge or engrave something with a V bit that millimeter movement, submillimetre movement in the Z axis means you cannot guarantee the width of your grooves, the deeper the V bit cuts in the wider. The groove is going to be, and unfortunately, throughout all my testing. I had some success, but it wasn’t repeatable and definitely not reliable, but using these end mills, it doesn’t matter how deep it goes because it is the same diameter all the way up the shaft of the end mill, so that sub millimeter movement in the Z axis is not a problem for for this particular issue. Well, thanks for watching. Hopefully you enjoyed this video. Leave your comments down below and a very special. Thank you to everyone on Patreon. It’s your support. That makes videos like this possible.