Advanced DIY PCB with a modified 3D Printer 

Your video is sponsored by a PCB manufacturer, but you show how to make PCBs at home? The irony is real!

I have been making PCBs like this since 2013, using a cheap CNC router. It took me over 3 months to work out the optimum machine settings, software settings, and tool sizes, during which time I nearly gave up. But I can now make really dense microprocessor boards reliably. I use 0.5mm bits for the vias and 0.8mm for the components. If any components won't fit (usually connectors) I enlarge the holes by hand with a 1mm drill. This is much quicker than changing the bit and setting up again to make another pass. It took me ages to realise that to stop a V-bit from breaking you need to increase the depth of cut, not reduce it. I use 3mm dowel pins to register the board. Screws don't make accurate register pins. Via connections can be made really quickly by taking a single length of wire and threading it backwards and forwards through all the via holes. Solder each one and then cut off all the spare wire links.

Genuinely expected this to be another formlabs resin printer used to expose board etch or something similar. Delightful to see such an old school method explained in such detail! Will definitely be checking out the rest of the channel :)

That 0.3mm drill sure scared me. I thought it was going to snap every time it started wobbling. Definitely spot drill first, next time.

You’re getting some really good quality results there, considering the bearings/belts/rails! I think the only advantages the professional machines have is they can be run with faster feed rates and a smoother workflow. Having machined several hundred PCBs on three different LPKF mills, I’ve universally drilled all the holes first, then run over the top surface of the PCB with very fine abrasive paper. This removes any small burrs. I’ve then run the insulation passes (smallest to largest). This consistently yields the best quality results. You then can flip the board and run the bottom insulation passes (if required). If you drill the holes last, you risk the pads being ripped up as the drill bit plunges. This becomes particularly important on special RF PCB materials (laminates) where the copper to dielectric adhesion is not as strong as it is with regular FR4.

Another note for others, when you're designing a PCB (using something like Eagle) and you use the AutoRouter, I believe you can set some tolerances to ensure that the routes generated will work with this kind of process. But with SMD components, sometimes things just get too small. You can also set your minimum trace widths.

Thank you for the review and additional knowledge. Another excellent review from Dave!!!!

i wish i had the time for a project like this. they need to just come out with an affordable machine that does this right out the gate. good work

This is really excellent :) ! Tank you so much ffor your work, and indeed I wasimpressed by the pcb quality level you reached, with clearly explained parameters. It might help me on project.

Interesting method, and quite intense amount of detail for each operation. Thanks for taking the time to develop and demonstrate it. I have have very good success making prototype PCB using the laser etch of black paint (I use Eagle image export into Lightburn), then Muriatic acid (HCL) and hydrogen peroxide solution to etch away copper. Very clean and much faster

Oh i was watching that tiny drill bit, waiting for it to snap! - You can get drill bits that are a bit shorter, and as such less flexible so there's a small chance of it going dancing on the PCB. Regarding doing the "center drills" with the V-bit - that's a good habit of doing.

Great quality for home made machine !! Thank you for sharing your experience with us !

This is why I make my own PCBs, sure they are cheap from companies like jlpcb but I am not a production house that needs a ton of PCBs. I only make one-offs for my own projects and I can get them done in very short order. I use a "normal" CNC engraving machine though, so my controller is grbl based. Originally it came with a parallel port controller but I converted that to grbl and kept the original stepper drivers/power supplies. That was one of the first PCBs that I made, a shield that plugs into an UNO and breaks out the pins to a parallel cable to run the original controller without any additional mods. In fact the only modification that I made to the original controller was to run a wire from the new probe pin (from the arduino) to a banana jack on the case. For layout I use Diptrace, and for G-code I use CopperCAM. One thing I am going to try next is exporting to a DXF or similar format and try more advanced toolpaths in a CAD package. This will actually require a bit of extra time processing the file in CAD to make it suitable for a toolpath but I wanted more options that cannot be had from CopperCAM and other "engraving" software. I want to be able to ramp in and easily set multiple depths, these are things that I can do easily in my CAD software.

There are also little copper rivets you can use to create through-hole connections

Spot drilling ..... would have lowered my heart rate a lot during the drilling pass :)

I mill PCBs at home before sending off to fab shop. Usually for anything complicated, mostly SMD I would just use toner transfer and etch the boards. It's way faster and less dusty. I'd add an enclosure or use mineral oil, the FR4 dust is extremely hazardous - takes decades, but it'll get you eventually.

Thanks a bunch for your very informative video. This got me going with flatcam.

PCB looks professionally built, I tried making with cnc machine but couldn't get result as you build. Very nice and thank you for sharing.

Really enjoy the 3d printer as a swiss army knife content.

Thanks for showing us what else our 3D printers are capable of! This is pretty cool.

Great video! Lots of great info and lots of care taken to present it all very clearly. Thanks! Please keep 'em coming!

Kudos for the time taken to put such clear content together!

My heart literally jumped when the 0.3mm bit was trembling on the surface, and all of a sudden went in like butter. What a moment :-D

Amazing! Not only is this a great DIY solution it also prevents any unscrupulous third party board maker from stealing your designs. Maybe in a future video you can show how to make a screen and apply solder mask. Also, do you insert metal sleeves in the vias or just leave as is? Heck, with a little practice you can have a tidy little business building unique devices for people.

Great job, buddy! It works for me. Thank you!

The benefit with milling PCBs are saving time during prototyping. As soon as the design is defined I use a manufacturer. To mill PCBs as an alternative to manufacturing will normally never be done.

The tiny holes usually use VERY high speed drilling. 200K-250K RPM is normal and 300K is sometimes used. It takes high speed to get the cutting edges of the tiny bits to go any reasonable speed since they are so tiny.

Very high-quality video. Thx!

Great video! Thank you! it's instructive as entertaining. Pretty good pedagogy

Very good video ! Looks like a really good quality PCB ! Just one thing though, we can see two vias under what seems to be the processor. That will be quite difficult to solder them flatly enough, as there will be a chip on top of them ... Maybe you could find some small rivets to go through ?

Great video!!!! Thanks!! love everything you did

"This was a very high learning curve for me" - *THAT* is what this is all about - what you learn is something you cannot purchase from a PCB manufacturer Liked the way you used a ready made design so you could concentrate on what you wanted to achieve. Would be interesting to see if you *can* solder on the parts and fully complete a home made Nano.

Excellent video , very interesting to see what can be achieved.

Great great great!! I have a CNC mill machine and your results are extremely good!!:)

Excellent video!

What a great result! I have been using relatively inexpensive pyramidal drill bits, of 60 degrees, and using a depth of 0.05mm and single pass. Also, as a hint, I was able to make my own vias by placing a single wire of copper of the same thickness as the via and 2mm long, and smashing it from both sides until it makes contact with the copper clad without soldering. The result can be good, just requires a bit of practice.

For holes, make center holes with the same cutter that you cut the tracks with. Then the drill will not jump when drilling.

I gave a thumbs-up already some while ago to this video. But your results are so gorgeous, that I need to comment as well. I have tried in the past to make doubled side boards on my cnc, and I would rather blame the screws for the misalignment (I used sewing pins). Also, if you start with a board, that is just big enough to have the alignment pins, you can easily flip it around without getting affected (so much) by the bed being misaligned, or a bit of dirt left on the bed

In my experience with pcb's, I noticed that , as the drill makes contact with the surface, there is going to be a bit of pressure, as the z-axis keeps moving the built plate upwards, but the drill did not grab into the copper layer to drill the hole. At least, with regular drills. Also, since the spindle would run at around 20K rpm, it tends to run away across the surface, upon this first contact. Especially with such thin drills, or when the drill is not sharp enough. Might be a sign, the drill is not exactly perpendicular to the plate, or the spindle attachment is a bit flexible; it cannot handle strong forces. Spot drilling might help, or maybe you can fix an attachment for a push center pointer. Anyway, I think this printer did an amazing job. I did not expect that with a belt driven system. Nice.

Nicely done

I recomend making small pre-holes with V-bit. Then your small drills have longer life, and dont wobble like crazy.

You just convinced me that sending the gerber to the fab is a far better/quicker way, even for my first prototype.

Sounds like David from the EEVBlog :D Good Video by the way!

Just like "G0 F300" you could add the line "G1 F15" so you dont have to edit all the drilling moves. At least for my printer running smoothieware that works well.

Wow I see so much success, now, tech-san, try make it better! Make a cool color protective layer before it begins. 1 automate the swapping tools and drill 2 automate magnetic check sensor detach (aligators) 3 automate (spin 180 degree) plates. 4 Protetive layer be scrapped by a tiny metal brush tool right at the end. 5 With tree fingers an automated selecting pcb compontents 6 Automate ball placing for ball, and paste placing for... 7 Automate set up tool for soldering with hotgun chips, and ball. 8 - Automate soldering! (wow that one should also be used to add adicional tin trails to already cut out pcbs) 9 - Nirvana. The initiation is done.

Nice Job!

If you painted the board with solder mask then ran a compliant/spring loaded scuffing bit to remove the mask you would be in perfect shape.

LPKF machines makes marks centers on small holes with engraver bit so small drill bits under 0.8mm does not wiggle. you may use same technique if it is possible in flat cam.

Nice work. I have so far failed with pcb milling on a modified T8 CNC and a Cyclone PCB Mill. In both cases, the spimdle runout was ridiculous.

@Tech2C 22:00 try replace 0.3mm drilling with etching with V-bit, but only to 0.1mm depth, it will make small holes to the copper, then you can drill with 0.3mm drill bit ;)

Great work, I love that you used an existing design (the nano). Next you need to do the mask & soldering :-D

Careful when vacuuming the PCB with a endstop wire still attached to your Arduino, you can get a static discharge

Nice work. I've been thinking of doing something similar. I'm not going to try to solder mask the whole thing just the places under the ICs that aren't visible. So, the solder will not go there and cause a short.

first of drilling deep hole may do bit hole sixty-degress drillfreze. its be of centre deep hole and small drill not vibration or broken

awsome. hand solder is totally doable for such.

Here's a thought. Laser cut Kapton tape with the negative image (ie kapton hole is where there is no copper). You could place the kapton tape on the pcb to start with. Once the lasering is done, chemically etch the exposed copper. potentially you could do both sides of the pcb at once assuming you lasered the kapton on both sides. Peel kapton off after etch and you'll have a nice set of traces left. Drill final holes and plate. You could also laser cut kapton with the soldermask and the stick that on the finished pcb.

I would have got rid of all the excess unused copper on both sides. May take longer but would be easier to look at the circuit for my eyes at least. Cool AF though! I'm torn in what to purchase as far as a printer or mill myself. I'm looking for a 3d printer with a large usable surface area with the ability to 3d print, but also mill too, and with the precision yours has. Excellent vids so far though. Very informative

Very cool video.

Fascinating.

I'd like to give you two thumbs up!

Looking awesome. I went the CNC DIY way because local post offices delays international packages by up to 6 months... Getting pcb made in China needs really a lot of patience.

that music was so chill I almost fell asleep

seeing how the drill bit is vibrating at the begining of the hole drilling it seams like it's gliding a bit over the copper. That is confirmed seeing the end result (holes not centered on the pads). That's preaty tipycal, coper is tought to enter. To avoid that i would advice you to have the hole's center slightly marked with the V bit befor the actual drilling, then the drill will self aligne in the prehole. Just my 2cts...

I'm glad you went into z probing. You really can't get good results milling copper clad without it, at least not without buying the expensive copper clad and using a fixture. I've got one of those cheap desktop CNC engravers and I simply couldn't get consistent results without doing z probing (using bCNC + grbl since it's not a converted printer). Also like the idea of using screws for alignment, I ended up making a 3d printed clamping jig but screws would probably be a lot easier. FlatCAM is a little quirky, but it's so much more capable than the other software like pcb2gcode. You might want to add a blurb about dealing with the dust, though. Especially fiberglass resin boards, the dust from milling is *extremely* dangerous and you really need to be careful about breathing it.

I guess one has to pre-plan the alignment hole locations so that the homing action of the printer does not wipe out a drill bit if it passes over a screw head? Tip on finishing a PCB, use "liquid tin". Stuff is expensive but makes a world of difference when soldering. Good video, I might stick to etching my PCBs but use the Hypercube for drilling. Maybe speed up the drill and spot-drill as well to reduce the drill dancing? Cheers,

Pretty slick! Do you need an SMD mega8, or mega168 to populate your creation?

Too cool.

Hi ... The video you made is awesome

The big problem with making your own double sided PCBs with a CNC is that you can't make vias, and will have to add wire jumpers between layers.

Awesome video!! Do you have any link to the tool you use for traces engraving? Thanks a lot

Very nice job! Small niggle: The board got a bit of a weeble wobble at 14:08

Hello, I have been using your really amazing work for a long time. I built HyperCube and followed the same reasoning for the printer to have more functions. I also wanted to be able to create PCBs, but I discovered JLCPCB and the whole concept turned out to be completely unnecessary, just at the price JLCPCB offers and above all quality, creating your own PCBs is simply pointless ... . Only one can attach to the price for a shipment which is (in my case) 4x bigger than the price for the PCB itself, but still the price for the whole order is reasonable. Immediately I say that no one pays me for any advertising just yesterday I got my order and I am very impressed with the quality. Greetings from Poland.

If you added some method of cooling like with water or air, you wouldn't need to do two passes because the copper wouldn't heat up enough to melt and move around into other traces.

Thanks too much, best video until now, i hope you also practice with a desktop cnc which accepts GRBL files.

That is indeed some really nice PCB you have milled. Anything we can do for through hole plating? It will be a perfect PCB if plating can be done

Hi, very impressive result and well presented video, do you have any information on the "modifications" that were done to the 3D printer? bye

i think the bits that did not get cut out are because of the way flatcam decides where to put cutting paths. .... if the distance is too close it will simply skip it and leave a bridged area.

What's the name of the bit you are using? I've been using those you recommend from Aliexpress 1:22 but they work good for a very few boards then the tip starts to go away.

You are doing this series of other interesting stuff to do with a 3d printer, I rebuild the Hypercube myself with the parts of my China i3 but I often was wondering if it is possible to 2,5D Scan of Objects with a 3D Printer, like a Mainboard other an other PCB to create a custom Heatsink for it, would be very interestet in stuff like that.

What if you drill the board underwater? wouldn't that hinder the dust from fusing back onto the board? Or maybe hook up a vacuum cleaner next to the drill bit to instantly get rid of all the dust. Just a thought.

Could you try to use the carbon fiber rods for x-axis for milling ?

Los circuitos se ven geniales...

Awesome video, I am trying to do on same path, but all my 15 degree V bits are snapped as soon as they touched the copper. Can you please tell me what bit you used in the video? that one looks different than the link you have provided.

thanks

i've been thinking about actually printing a mask on a copper pcb then etching it. it won't create the holes, though.

GREAT !! Thank You , Sir but HOW do we get the reference designators onto the PCB? That thick white "paint" we see on commercial PCBs is just TOO SMALL for DIY, .....or is there a WAY ? Thank You !

very nice. What motherboard do you use in your 3d printer, and is the marlin code available to turn the 3d printer into a CNC cut and drill machine? Thanks

Very Nice))

Very nice video, how do you plan on electroplating the vias?

Can you make the "track maker tool" make a smal mark in the place of each hole? The small mark will help to guide the drill.

MG, u so gooodddddd, tks so muchh

I was hoping this would be showing a new conductive material to 3D print boards. I’ve seen a couple of board 3D printers. Very good, but too expensive for my use (around $2,000 each for the basic models).

Looking at the 0.3mm drill it sure should be sharper.

Thanks for sharing. My advice buy a 2500 mW laser. Paint your pcb board black and laser engrave your design on it. Through it in an etching solution and you will get 100 times finer PCBs. Based on your design, the process might be also faster.

''your doing it wrong'' - the 0.3mm drill bit should not be drilling into flat copper, the V bit should have made a centre punch hole for the bit, this is done when etching circuit boards by etching a ''hole'' for the bit..

what is the speed of engraving you use? and how far the probe is made between each point?

Thanks for sharing such a great idea! But sir the link for 0.1mm v-bit is not working! Is there a alternative link for it ?

It's for fun only! :-) looks great! Like!

Hi! My interest is large two-sided copper clad diy pc boards, with a mix of surface and through-hole. What have you got? With process.

Why does the drill need to be quite so long? It seems like you could avoid the issue by using a much shorter one.