PC board milling?

[William Danielson]

The EDM process might work. Those that knew all about it said the 
discharge coaxed molecules to leave the base material and head towards 
the electrode.....it works quite well, not sure if anybody ever EDM PCB 
or not ??

Bill

On 12/31/2015 02:37 PM, Terry N4TLF wrote:
> 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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