circuit construction techniques

A while back, I built a desktop cnc machine with the intent of milling circuit boards. Well, I finally got around to playing with it.

The spindle is just a cheap rotary tool with one of the drill bits that came with it. I really need to get and end mill bit. The drill bit skips around a bit, but it does work.

Below is a photo of the first run and the end result. You can see a few test runs that didn’t work out too well, but once I familiarize myself with the cnc software and the machine itself, hopefully I’ll be able to make some decent boards.

Next, I wanted to try some manhattan construction using k7qo’s method of punching out copper islands.

I picked up a cheap sheet metal punch off amazon as well as some cem copper clad boards and tried it out.

The method seems to work okay. I’ve punched out quite a few islands and now I just need to use them and see if it works better than cutting them with my drill press.