Opinions sought on cheap desktop PCB milling machine

[HankMcSpank]

Re what you've done to minimize thecut lines...there's a free app out there called visolate - it's basically a midline voronoi region generator ...it takes a gerber as an input file & creates an NC file. It's poorly supported & the documentation sucks, but it does work ok (you just need java loaded on your PC with JAva's 3D libraries loaded too, it's explained a little better here...

http://blog.makezine.com/2010/07/26/...sing-visolate/


Terrible stray capacitance though so forget it for anything over 1khz or so!

(I'm also in email contact with a chap who after a bit of communication to/fro, is soon about to lauunch a web portal where you upload a dxf & it'll generate the voronoi midlines & give you the file back with the midlines done for you)

Re worring about offsets.....in cambam you can import a gerber, fine tune the offset & see the cut width onscreen...the trick is to get the offset so that the midlines of ajacent pins of your smallest IC pitch so they almost share the same path. Difficult to explain, but look here...



the IC pads are black, the tool cut width is turquoise & the midline for the toolpath is the dark blue thin line in the middle ....it's important to set your offset to get these midlines to almost kiss, but not go over, else you'll be unintentionally cutting into the neigbouring pad.