Monday 27 September 2021

CNC Milling PCB Manhattan style solder pads on cheap CNC 3018 machine

I recently bought a cheap CNC milling/engraving/laser cutting machine - a CNC 3018 Pro as it was advertised locally for less than half the cost of new and hadn't been used for an hour as the owner just couldn't get on with it, hence the sale, much as this one...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08P5WPDLP


I'd like to use it for milling PCB's and maybe for milling panel cutouts and possibly engraving them.
First test was to make some Manhattan Style solder pads and after some rapid learning of software, the first panel came out quite well.
Cutter is a 1mm end mill and 3 passes at 0.4mm cut depth to get to 1.2mm deep cut makes it easy to score through with a sharp craft kinfe/Stanley knife to get the bits required.


I stuck the board to the 'waste board' on the mill bed with 13mm wide double sided tape and used 'Candle GRBL controller' and it's height map facility to send the code to the machine.
It's quite easy to pry off by sliding an old putty knife under the board and then pick the tape off - didn't even need cleaning off with IPA or similar.



Short video of it in action (it's nowhere near as noisy as the camera makes it out to be).