One of the biggest chores in making your own PCB's is drilling the
holes. Drilling the holes becomes more complicated when you want to do
double sided PCB's. Over the span of half a year I built a CNC PCB
drill.
The CNC drilling of PCB's eliminates the mistakes made and reduces the
exposure to loud noise and harmful dust.
The robot is made from some parts bought at world of CNC (http://www.worldofcnc.com/), MDF
plate from the construction market and some bits here and there. The
main X axis made from an old kitchen drawer.
Pictures
Here are the drive electronics for the CNC. One computer powersupply
and one dummy harddisk as a load supply power to the motor drivers an
the fan. The fan cools the motor drivers but they stay quite cool, they
reach a temperature of about 40 degrees centigrade uncooled. The two
breadboards at the bottom of the image breakout the signals from the
parallel port to the motor drivers. I really need to make a proper PCB
for that.
Here is a closeup of the motor driver and the cooling fan. The driver
has its own page here.
Closeup of the Y axis stepper motor. The coupling is made with a bit of
PVC tubing and some crimp connections around the tube to connect to the
leadscrew. The whole is fastened with 90 degree angle irons from the
store.
Overview of the X axis mechanics. In the top left corner you can see
the drawer rails. The black blocks are the Delrin screw nuts, there are
two of them to eliminate any play. This is done by adjusting the 3
screws that also go trough the screw nut.
Z axis top view. You can see the dremel on the right side.
Drill bit and holder. The dremel head has a 20mm screw pitch so one
20mm screw with some tape keep it fastened to the Z axis. The dremel
body is also held with some holders that are used for rainwater ducts.
