My high school has a versaLaser machine, and from what the teacher told me, it acts as a printer, and just prints an image onto whatever is under the laser…
Now, If I design a board in Eagle, export the PNG(or BMP, depending on how the machine works, if it actually does only Black on White, or gradients and such… (would want just either copper or none…)), and etched out the copper where I didnt want it, I could just run the outline script with like .1 spacing, correct? or would .08 be better?
And I could then, export CNC code to drill the vias on cnc mill, right?
This seems like it may work, just wanted to see if anyone had ever done anything like this before.
reklipz:
My high school has a versaLaser machine, and from what the teacher told me, it acts as a printer, and just prints an image onto whatever is under the laser…
reklipz,
Correct! This neat machine could help with PCB fabrication. As an experiment you could use it to mark or ‘etch’ copper clad PCB materials, but you may not be very happy with the results for the amount of effort required.
A laser etcher ‘burns off’ the surface of materials to leave distinct markings (artwork, bar codes, text). For a PCB to be useful you’d need to burn off all the copper except the traces (tracks) used for signals. In commercial PCB construction this is done by chemical etching, and in some prototype systems it is done by a very small cutter.
The big problem with mechanical systems is not having plated-through-holes (PTH) to connect top and bottom (or inner) layers of a PCB. In the chemical PCB process the holes are drilled first, then plated through, then masked with the trace pattern (by photolithography) and finally etched. Go here to read a PCB tutorial:
If you have access to the VersaLaser it would be fun to experiment! I doubt it’s value for PCB fabrication, but for other things it would be fantastic. For example, front panels with laser etched text and graphics. Even more fun, clear plastic panels that are edge-lit by LEDs. How about making an analog clock face (you know, twelve or sixty ticks around a circle) with the versa laser and lighting each with an LED that indicates the time?
They didn’t have neat toys like this when I was in high school!
riden:
Creating a solder mask for the PCB was the first thing that came to mind for me.
riden,
Good idea. I assume you mean cutting a mylar sheet (overhead projector type) and placing it on a bare PCB, applying solder paste, and carefully pulling the sheet off? Would be great for hot air or IR soldering of all the parts at once.