Going to work on assembling some circuit boards. If anyone wants to come hang or do some electronics work or anything…
-D
Are you working on Open Garage stuff? If so how long will you be there? Steve
Are these the CANiTM Boards?
Among other things, I am working on assembly of the CANiTM stuff. More fixing little things. I have a E38 ECM and connectors down here at the space. I’ll be here until about 2, then I need to run up the hill and show my rental house. I’ll be back till probably about 4 or 5.
If in doubt, call me. 5134843029
-D
As a good adjunct to same, I should be there around 5 or 6 and really do expect to be creating circuit boards using the laser cutter and etchant this time. This is the second fastest technique I have seen for going from idea to finished board. Like 30 minutes in really simple cases and not much longer in complex ones.
The fastest is using the cnc milling machine. The only problem with that is that it isn't quite as good for finer smt parts.
Anyway, I really am going to do my best this time to be prepped before I come in and not yap instead of etch. Anyone interested I will shoot for being there by six.
j
If you have a board ready for firmware ans testing put it by the lock pick equipment and I’ll pick it up the next time I’m in the area.
So how does this work, is there something you coat the board with that the laser reacts with to set the resist?
And how do you cut the boards to size? Score-and-break, hacksaw, or can the laser do that too once the copper is gone?
I was at the space today, but couldn’t stick around, I hope to get to see this technique some other time.
Was going to come down to see if I could help but got sucked into somebody else’s problems. Let me know if you will be working on the CANiTM boards or the e38 harness another time and will try to help. Steve
So how does this work, is there something you coat the board with that the laser reacts with to set the resist?
You paint it with flat black spraypaint. 3-5 coats and then lazernate the parts that you want etched off. You wanna tweek your design to leave as much copper on as you can to speed up the lazernation. Since you aren't going to do this for anything but early protos or one offs anyway, that normally isn't that big a deal. You can only do at most two layer etching using this technique and is never going to be as exact or high res as photo-lito which is what you want for any real production stuff.
And how do you cut the boards to size? Score-and-break, hacksaw, or can the laser do that too once the copper is gone?
You can score and break or hacksaw or whatever. I don't use the POWER OF LASING! to cut the boards because a) copper isn't going to cut and it is time consuming on the laser to make the extra space to be etched and b) well, there really isn't a b, I just haven't. Wait! b) is there some kind of chloride in any of the resins for the boards? hmmm, probably not really. Okay, no b).
I was at the space today, but couldn't stick around, I hope to get to see this technique some other time.
After tonight, I will probably be doing this again for the design I am really working on right now, which isn't the one I am building out tonight, since the parts just got in today. Plus I have precoated enough copper boards that doing a dummy demo shouldn't be an issue.
There are also a couple of really good instructables kinda things on the web about this which is where I got started a few months agao.
Crap, it's late. Gotta get to space.
j