For a while we had the PCB mill sitting in electronics, no-one has it running or has taught anybody how to use it.
I believe the status of making PCBs at the makerspace is there’s a few folks who’d be interested in a class but no-one knows how to do it and is willing to teach one.
Personally, I understand the process but don’t want to mess with the chemicals and put in the work when I can order a board from a Chinese board house for less cost than the chemicals and a wait time of about a week.
Any etching chemicals would be found in Science. Don’t think we have a pcb etching set up. Paging @GreenOrbs - Science Chair.
The Plastics SIG (PIGSIG) has a Carbide Nomad. Kevin @keoliver can give you the details. Problem w/ drilling/machining pcb boards is dust control. I don’t think drilling/machining fiberglass type boards is currently allowed. Subject to change - dust control,
I’ll second this I used to make boards but it’s just not worth it these days. Also if you don’t want to go to China, oshpark.com makes custom boards really cheap in the US but they’re more expensive than China.
I considered developing a class for doing PCB etching at one point so I went and asked around. The overwhelming feedback I recieved was that making boards was simply not worth it. Of all the people I talked to only one had even a vague interest in etching boards.
Unless I get an indication that interest has substantially increased since then, I don’t intend to develop such a class at this time.
Dale, the Dallas Personal Robotics Group (DPRG) recently held an intro/training at DMS on using KICAD for PCB design. You can watch it here.
DPRG members also have a ton of experience and feedback with using very inexpensive fab shops to make custom PCBs. I forget the names of those but can dig those out if you want.
**Bottom line - path of “least resistance” → ** KICAD → inexpensive fab shop → boards to your address in just a few days.
BTW - you’re welcome to jump in any DPRG meeting to ask about this. We meet online every Tuesday night and in person typically once per month on the 4th Saturday at DMS. Learn more at https://www.dprg.org/
I’ve been out of town over the weekend so a big thanks to all who responded!
The guy I watch on YouTube and Patreon is very particular about people other than his Patreon members producing the PCB’s (except for personal use to experiment with.) So my interest is in one’s or two’s at a time. I’ll explore if that still makes sense with a PCB fab.
Also, thanks for the heads-up about the Dallas Robotics Group. I’ll contact them as well.
I looked into this and even made / still have a cupric chloride based etchant that is renewable. I also spent a lot of time trying to get the PCB mill working. However I found that the boards I could get made were vastly superior to anything I could make. Making a 2-sided board is difficult but possible however there are no plated vias. It is possible to tin plate the board, but that’s another chemical with a shelf life. Solder mask and silk screen I never figured out how to make myself. It turns out that waiting a week or so for boards is just not a big deal and the boards are vastly better, two sided, plated vias, tinned, solder mask, and silk screen on both sides.
I understand him being particular about his intellectual property, but it seems to me that not allowing his customers to use board fab houses really limits who his potential paid subscribers are. I’ve contemplated his membership before, but the idea of having to produce my own boards rather than using a board fab is a deal breaker for me. Thank you for saving me the time and money.
i have me a small table top ebay pcb mill/engraver i use to make a lot of things with … just small things… lol
im a retired journeyman and new to the dfw area, cad cam to gcode, also some engineering.
if you are lacking a working pcb mill, i would be happy to take a look at it for you… if its not to beat up or old, im sure its simple enough to be an easy fix… and then i can show you how to generate g-code for it with FreeCAD … opensouce free cad software.
what model is the machine if it has one… lots epay stuff out there…
what software are you using to run it… where are you getting g-code… these are all things that are good…
The PCB mill is more or less working. I personally gave up on two aspects, work holding and flatness. My goal was to make easy, quick two sided boards where I could then use through holes for vias. I’ve done many boards like this with heat transfer of laser toner and etching. I couldn’t find a work holding technique that was repeatable enough for two sided boards and that was faster than just etching. I think anyone willing can try the pcb mill again. I’d be happy to pull all my notes and show you what I tried.
Ultimately I just decided that I can wait 1-2 weeks for a cheap but well manufactured board with real vias, solder mask, and silk screen.
A week or so ago, I spoke with a fellow maker in the electronics area. He said it was cheaper and easy enough to use some of the custom PCB printers available to save time and money. Making them yourself is basically more trouble than it’s worth.
Not only can you have boards made cheap, they (the board houses) can even populate them (fully or partially) for pretty cheap. Especially helpful for tiny passives and small-pitch (or even LGA/BGA) parts.
I use JLCPCB and their minimum board order for populated boards is 2.
Just have to be careful to specify parts (in your BOM) that they have in stock. They stock hundreds of thousands of common part numbers.
Even with the tariffs it’s probably still cheaper than a U.S. board house but it does make a PCB printer like the Voltera a lot more attractive. It’s probably imported too, though
The Volteras are imported from Canada…but a Voltera and a Lumen would be the bee’s knees.
(I have a Lumen at home and love using it to do my picking and placing, but, feeder support is something that’s still a work in progress for the folks at Opulo, but, they are working on addressing it and have released new feeders every few months to address it).
just a note to every one … yes it is inexpensive and easier to just order your pcb from god knows who… this i guess would be fine for common creations but if you are designing something proprietary and possible something you wish to take to market… baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad !!! idea to use them … keep your data to yourself stop using cloud based and setup your own frigging databases… stop giving you data away!@!@!
