I’ve got an idea for a project that involves a bunch of very small PCBs (maybe 50, up to a few hundred). Small, like just big enough to mount a T-1 3/4 LED on top and a SMD resistor. Say, 7mm square (or, preferably, round). Can I get these made and cut apart, or do I panelize an array of them with lines of small drill holes and break them apart myself?
(In case it’s not clear, I’d like to get 3 or 4 separate, small round PC boards which, together, cover less than a square inch, for $2.50, instead of paying $2.50 for each of them.)
I am also in the market for some small PCBs. While I dont need ones as small as SpaceWrench, I do need to get a batch (100) of 7/16th square boards made up ( special smd to DIP8 adapters ). 19.14 square inches total. Yes, that extra 1/16" to make it .5 square is important…
If worse comes to worse, I could gang the boards up and shear them myself, but it would be so much easier if I could get them delivered all cut apart.
Speaking of which, if anyone is looking for a fairly cheap way to shear PCBoards without creating fibreglass dust, have a look at the 7-1/2" mini brake/shear from both Grizzley and Harbor Freight. This thing is small, forget steel larger then about 22ga and 5052 aluminum no more then .050" ( fortunatly, thats what I use the most ) but it will mow through PCboards and the above mentioned metals just fine and you can put clean sharp bends in metals to make brackets and stuff. On special from time to time as low as $99. To clear the copper on .062" PCB material, I did have to shim the top blade a little, but its not overstressing the machine because I make sure not to exceed the metal cutting limits.
That’s really nice! I’ve been needing something like that for a long time. Tell me more. What are the different dies for? Do they do different bend rad? Are they all full length? Are more/replacement dies available? what’s the meaning of life?
The string-of-holes method works fairly well, but it’s relatively hard to break using 0.020 holes with 0.010 spacing. V-scoring is the way to go for a large array of square boards, but it’s not something SF offers right now. Too bad.
For sanity, I need to assemble the boards while they’re still panelized. The shearing method doesn’t work for populated boards, and a string-of-holes requires a lot of board flex that’ll break components & joints. So far, v-scoring has worked really well.
For odd-shaped boards like the OP’s, tab routing is the solution, but I haven’t found any proto shops yet that offer it. This is a combination of internal routing for the board outline, with a few tabs (usually a string of 3-4 holes) to hold the boards together in the panel.
I don’t get why nobody offers internal routing, because it seems like just more time on a machine that’s already setup. There must be more to it. If you know of any shops offering internal / tab routing, please drop me a PM.
Just a guess, but it may be related to the fact than an internal rout would either require a plunge cut or a pre-drilled hole to start. A machine that did only external routing wouldn’t need Z-axis control.
I was thinking in terms of the bits, on which a plunge tip shouldn’t be a significant added cost. I hadn’t thought about the Z-axis motion, and the fact that they probably didn’t need it normally…