PC board milling?

[Terry N4TLF]

Hey Alberto,
>From what I read, it would take a decent amount of power in the laser to cut 
through metal.  I haven't seen any (affordable) solid state lasers that are 
okay to cut metal.  Of course, cutting the thinner layer of copper on a 
circuit board is simpler than cutting other metal, so I guess that it's 
possible.  That would be much better than using a heavy router & mechanical 
parts at tight tolerances.

There is also a concern about fumes from melting the metal and potentially 
the fiberglass.  I plan to do this in my garage in any event (with plenty of 
airflow), not in the house.

However, the consensus here seems to be that it's a bad idea.  I may wait a 
little while to see how things progress in 2016.

BTW, I was able to move partitions around with the program that you 
suggested, and this machine is now also on Windows 10.  Thanks again!
73, Terry, N4TLF


-----Original Message----- 
From: Alberto di Bene
Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2015 2:00 PM
To: tacos at amrad.org
Subject: Re: PC board milling?

What about putting a well focused laser diode of a few W in place of the pen 
on a paper plotter ?
The pen-up and pen-down should be translated into OFF/ON command for the 
diode, but apart
from this, I don't see any other major changes...   of course the laser 
diode will just engrave the
isolation lines between the tracks, it would be impractical to vaporize big 
areas of copper  .

Did anybody try this ?

73  Alberto  I2PHD


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