{"id":82,"date":"2009-06-07T17:55:19","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T01:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.simpits.org\/simpits\/?p=82"},"modified":"2009-06-07T17:55:19","modified_gmt":"2009-06-08T01:55:19","slug":"making-printed-circuit-boards-without-chemicals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.simpits.org\/simpits\/?p=82","title":{"rendered":"Making printed circuit boards without chemicals."},"content":{"rendered":"

In doing research for making wiring boards for the EPIC (used in my F-15C project) I discovered a technique for making printed circuit boards (PCBs) that doesn’t involve any etching chemicals.<\/p>\n

The process is called PCB Isolation Routing and is done by using a CNC router with a VERY small “V” bit in it.\u00a0 The bit used has a tip diameter of about 0.007″.<\/p>\n

The key to the whole process is being able to generate code to create the PCB.\u00a0 This can be accomplished with the free version of Eagle PCB<\/a> in combination with a free program called PCB-GCODE<\/a><\/p>\n

PCB-GCODE is a plug-in for Eagle that will take your board layout and generate the needed code to drive any standard CNC router that understands G-code.<\/p>\n

If you head over to this<\/a> site, you can get a pretty good overview of the process itself.<\/p>\n

In order to use this process with my ShopBot, I needed to come up with a way to hold down the PCB material while the machine was working on it.\u00a0 Below is the jig I created.<\/p>\n

\n

\"PCB<\/a>

PCB hold down jig<\/p><\/div>\n

When you add two more hold downs, this jig can hold down a pretty good sized board.\u00a0 The jig itself is 11-3\/4″ high and about 13″ wide.<\/p>\n

The grooves you can see cut in the right corner are for alignment blocks.\u00a0 They consist of two 6″x3\/4″ .125″ thick aluminum bars that are used to locate the PCB material in the lower right hand corner of the jig, where the X & Y “home” is.\u00a0 By leaving the bars in place, you have a repeatable point for locating your material when you flip it if you’re doing double sided boards.<\/p>\n

When my double sided PCB stock arrives next week, I’ll put together a video showing how it works using my new EPIC input boards as an example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In doing research for making wiring boards for the EPIC (used in my F-15C project) I discovered a technique for making printed circuit boards (PCBs) that doesn’t involve any etching chemicals. The process is called PCB Isolation Routing and is done by using a CNC router with a VERY small “V” bit in it.\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sitenews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simpits.org\/simpits\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simpits.org\/simpits\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simpits.org\/simpits\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simpits.org\/simpits\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simpits.org\/simpits\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.simpits.org\/simpits\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/www.simpits.org\/simpits\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simpits.org\/simpits\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simpits.org\/simpits\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simpits.org\/simpits\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}