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martin2250
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Hi everyone, I love seeing what you make with OpenCNCPilot, feel free to post pictures of the PCBs (or other projects) you make here.
Adapter board for a display (obvious from SIEMENS LOGO!), sold at Pollin. It carries an Arduino Nano V3 and an I2C adapter on one side and the display on the other:
This was the first approach, the conneection between board and display is made of wires. Display and board are aligned when mounted, of course. My second approach uses matching connectors on board and display, so both parts are located closer together. The housing is made from POM and holds both parts together. No pictures yet, sorry.
Another project I made I already posted here, but to keep the pictures together, here again... It's the controller board for an electrically boosted city scooter (in german). The design is two sided.
The structures for the MPU9250 are 0.2 .. 0.3 mm
Not possible without height mapping -> OpenCNCPilot! :)
Time for a Change, no PCB but something OpenCNCPilot can also very good. ;)
height mapping rules. :+1:
Stefan
I'll just leave my Imgur Album here, since I dont want to spam this thread with 10 pictures of my crappy PCBs:
All in all I gotta say that most of my circuit are just impossible to route, without the height adjustment of the CNC and OpenCNCPilot does a pretty good job with that.
Kind of off topic, but did any of you guys think about protection of the bare copper of your PCBs. My PCBs are getting very dirty, as time passes and I would love to get some input as to how I would protect the from corrosion etc.
Hi @sirsenor !
I did not try it yet, but I have read about using a spray coat (does not know the English name, in Portuguese it's called "Verniz", it's used to coat wood, or even paint to make it gloss and help to protect, I will post a picture later of how it looks like), the people said it would not interfere on the solder process (I am a bit skeptic about this, but need to try it out) and will protect against oxidation.
I had seen a process that I thought is very nice, look at the video below, but I will need to make a spring loaded tool holder to try it. Don't know if this is an easy job... I think to get the spring pressure right will not be easy.
Look here: https://youtu.be/7EctuSTL7-w?t=180
best regards
Thanks m8 will send some beer money very soon via donate, really appreciative of all the hard work you have put in :)
i have used circuit board varnish before when i used to chemical etch my boards... it does a great job and can be resoldered after the varnish is on.. ie to replace a part... it acts as an insulator as well i think from memory - should be able to buy it at thew local electronics store
My latest project, a three-phase power monitor built around the ATM90E36A:
As of yesterday it is mounted in a DIN rail case inside our main fuse box and is providing data to my RPi/InfluxDB/Grafana setup.
@trietdao95 : here are the design files for the bottom right board in the first picture gerber_esp-carrier.zip
I needed an excuse to test out my solder mask technique and cutting the pcb out with my new bits so I designed this little breakout board for an LM324N. I hate it to connect 5 jumper wires to build up a quick little NIamp. The board will be a new home for an LM324N and four potentiometers to adjust the gain.
I tried to use every step I can to "manufacture" this pcb.
- Isolation of traces
- Applying and curing soldermask
- routing soldermask off the pads
- drilling the holes
- cutting the pcb out
I will most likely never cut my pcbs out again ( I think fiber glass dust is not really good for your lungs :D )
You can also clearly see that the left pads are nice and clean and the right pads have scratch marks on them. Thats because I noticed halfway trough the process that my spindle is not mounted firmly and had a little of a wiggle. Well at least my copper is safe and wont degrade as much.
Hi!
How do you remove the ink from the pads?
See you!
Alexandre Benson Smith Desenvolvimento THOR Software www.thorsoftware.com.br (11) 9 9641-1808 (11) 4992-3496 (Enviado pelo celular)
Em qua, 18 de jul de 2018 15:44, sirsenor [email protected] escreveu:
I needed an excuse to test out my solder mask technique and cutting the pcb out with my new bits so I designed this little breakout board for an LM324N. I hate it to connect 5 jumper wires to build up a quick little NIamp. The board will be a new home for an LM324N and four potentiometers to adjust the gain. [image: image] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/25607877/42900852-3f7c4f74-8aca-11e8-9303-9d2d2bdf30ae.png
I tried to use every step I can to "manufacture" this pcb.
- Isolation of traces
- Applying and curing soldermask
- routing soldermask off the pads
- drilling the holes
- cutting the pcb out
I will most likely never cut my pcbs out again ( I think fiber glass dust is not really good for your lungs :D )
You can also clearly see that the left pads are nice and clean and the right pads have scratch marks on them. Thats because I noticed halfway trough the process that my spindle is not mounted firmly and had a little of a wiggle. Well at least my copper is safe and wont degrade as much.
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I use the soldermask gerber file I get from easyeda in combination with FlatCAM to generate a gcode file that routes the pads geometry at Zheight of 0mm. The trick is that the spindle speed should be set as slow as possible so the copper underneath it doesnt get damaged when the bit passes over it. The results look pretty darn good, even if it means that the process of creating a pcb takes longer.
It's a bit rough around the edges but damn, this is the most beautiful milled PCB that I've seen yet!
Why worry about FR-4 dust? Just drip some alcohol on the board before you start isolation milling, this will bind all the dust. Cutting out should be quick enough that you can vacuum up the dust as the machine is working.
Very Nice tip!!!!
I saw a cnc milling machine that uses a spring loaded bit to mill the ink...
Take a look at it, you will not regret the time spent. https://youtu.be/7EctuSTL7-w
I will give it a try....
Thanks for the tip!
Alexandre Benson Smith Desenvolvimento THOR Software www.thorsoftware.com.br (11) 9 9641-1808 (11) 4992-3496 (Enviado pelo celular)
Em qua, 18 de jul de 2018 16:19, sirsenor [email protected] escreveu:
I use the soldermask gerber file I get from easyeda in combination with FlatCAM to generate a gcode file that routes the pads geometry at Zheight of 0mm. The trick is that the spindle speed should be set as slow as possible so the copper underneath it dont get damaged when the bit passes over it. The results look pretty darn good, even if it means that the process of creating a pcb takes longer.
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@bensonsbc this is the video I was inspired from, but I knew that the time spent on finding a good spring that fits and gets the job done was not worth it so I experimented to find another way.
@martin2250 I also thought about using some plain old vegetable oil, but I didnt want my bits to get greasy. For now I will stick to not cutting out my pcbs and just use my clippers (as long as the pcb is rectangular).
Hi all! Since I always sit by and watch the milling process and don't want to get my working area spilled with dust, I use a vacuum cleaner with modded nozzle to suck away any dust and pieces the tool produces. I take it as some sort of meditation - just sitting there and following the tool with my nozzle for hours... ;-) Needless to say, I wear noise protection equipment when attending my CNC router.
The modding is straight forward: A short piece of PUR foam heat insulation from HVAC (heating, ventilating & air condition) cladded with duct tape and pressed into the standard vacuum cleaner hose. Inserted into this PUR part is a not so short (about 150 mm) piece of 16 mm plastic hose (electrical installation hose). The end of this plastic hose I flattened by applying heat.
The vacuum cleaner runs at its slowest setting, the reduced diameter produces enough airspeed to suck in all dust and most of the flitter. Leave it at the slowest setting since the reduced diameter restricts airflow through the vacuum cleaner, reducing the needed cooling for its motor.
Hello Martin,
thank you for your great work!
Did this PCB with a cheap mill and OpenCNCPilot after many failed attempts to get it done without leveling (before I found your program :-))
I made a quick branch with an icon you might want to use.
I like your coding style, nicely done.
Thanks again and regards A.J.Bauer
Hi @A-J-Bauer,
thanks, your PCB looks great! I absolute love your icon and I actually was about to ask for permission to use it :) I'll definitely add it before the next release!
Happy milling! Martin
I just completed my last attempt at milling and protecting the footprint of a QFN IC (NCP5911 Dual Mosfet Driver IC) and took some pictures along the way. Take a look here!
I think the next step would be completing my QFN breakout board and then maybe a fully fledged breadboard module.
Hi sirsenor, looks quite good :)
Do you remove the solder mask with a spring loaded stylus or just made another pass with the engraving bit, adjusted somewhat higher?
You ask why the height map didn't work any more. Did you perhaps forget to apply the map?
Harald
Do you remove the solder mask with a spring loaded stylus or just made another pass with the engraving bit, adjusted somewhat higher?
The latter. I let the spindle spin at a very slow speed. You can see the markings of the engraving bit in the forth and fifth picture.
You ask why the height map didn't work any more. Did you perhaps forget to apply the map?
I believe Ive applied it. I think this issue might be caused when I apply the solder mask and press it down to even it out.
This is the PCB for my latest project, an energy monitor to plug between an outlet and a device. For clearing out the large copper areas, I used a 1mm endmill and FlatCAM to generate the gcode.
Beautifull job!
On Mon, Dec 24, 2018 at 2:58 PM Martin Pittermann [email protected] wrote:
[image: 20181221_104728] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8293473/50404145-e173bb80-07a4-11e9-99ab-c449b220d9a1.jpg [image: 20181221_104815] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8293473/50404147-e2a4e880-07a4-11e9-9f78-780a88a8d1c6.jpg [image: 20181222_231439] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8293473/50404148-e46eac00-07a4-11e9-8760-08b1ccc5a672.jpg
This is the PCB for my latest project, an energy monitor to plug between an outlet and a device. For clearing out the large copper areas, I used a 1mm endmill and FlatCAM to generate the gcode.
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-- Sds L.Abbadia
After 3 or 4 tries I was finally able to get a decent looking double sided and masked PCB:
Gotta tweak my settings a little bit, since flatcam produces tiny copper strands between the copper areas.
This time I tried to print a real solder mask onto some transparent foil, but unfortunately my printer is not the newest and the toner is almost empty so the saturation of the black ink was not enough and the UV light managed to get trough and solidify the solder mask on the pads. I tried to remove the solder mask with a little motor and a 0.3mm isolation bit, which does not look good (I only routed of the pads that I had to solder to the board)
For the other side I printed 4 copies of the solder mask and stacked them on top of each other, which helped a lot, but after 4 hours of working on this PCB with no breakfast I was exhausted and the alignment took a hit.
Fine! Recently (somewhere?) I saw one using a spring loaded stylus to scratch away the solder mask from the pads, again using the router. If you find an easy to implement solution on that (fixing the stylus in whatever to make it scratch lightly enough to not hurt the copper and be guided enough vertically to hit only the pads), please let us know... :-)
I will try that technique tomorrow. I just found a suitable spring, which lets the bit move up and down and not fall out of the chuck.
I would also love to know if you guys have any idea which chemical I could use to pretin the pads and more importantly the fiberglass between the pads, because without this the components always have to be soldered to the pad that is connected to something else, which leads to very awkardly soldered components. I found some videos/blog posts/tutorials online that suggest using hydrochloric acid (not a fan of this method) electroplating a copper layer on the fiberglass (which is done industrially, but would require drilling the holes before isolating the pads, which would make solder masking the pads messier, because the solder mask would leak through the holes) or use liquid tin (which seems to be the easiest method, but that stuff is pretty expensive and also very hazardous)
I found this tutorial https://www.all4hardware4u.de/platinenherstellung/platine-verzinnen/ It's in german, but perhaps you get the point.
He uses a chemical that is used by pipe-fitters to solder copper tubes for water or heating installations. -> Fittingslötpaste Rosol 3 von Rothenberger
[I haven't tried that myself]