Ok PCB milled now how to drill the holes ?

[HankMcSpank]

Aahh...I see - I use nice flat acrylic as spoiler backing board with double sided tape, the acrylic gets thrown....



(btw the green wire is my auto Z zero sensor wire to my CNC board..the right hand side clamping strip is conductive & makes contact with the FR4 copper surface. The tool is grounded...therefore when the tool touches to copper FR4 surface, the CNC-USB software knows it's exactly Z0)

....but only after I've used both sides! (I don't need totally flat because CNC-USB software probes the Z plane prior to V cutting)

[John S]

....but only after I've used both sides! (I don't need totally flat because CNC-USB software probes the Z plane prior to V cutting)

How long does that take ?

[HankMcSpank]

How long does that take ?

to do the Z probing?

About 1 minute (depends on big the PCB part is & how many probes you select) The amount of Z probes is set by the user ....eg 'probe four times in the X axis & 3 times in the Y axis' ...therefore 12 probes etc)




About 2yrs ago, I was seeking a slicker way to autocompensate for Z irregularities (all methods I'd tried up until that time were either a complete ballsache or sh1t)...at the time Andrej (CNC-USB author), hadn't offered the feature, but I pestered him sufficiently & he implemented it, so I bought it :-) ...best money I think I'll ever spend wrt PCB Milling

Just load up *any* g-code file (it doesn't have to be pcb related g-code) ....CNC-USB then gets the X/Y extremities of the part ...you tell the software how many Z probes to make within these extremities, then click 'Warp'.....& start your cutting.

It works perfectly.

[John S]

OK yes I can see the advantage of this, especially on larger boards. for me it wouldn't be worth it, the only boards I do are 100x 100 max.

Interesting software though especially as it can do proper lathe threading.
Just my take on it compared to Mach is that in Mach we can have just what we want on a screen and a lot, in fact all the alternatives I have seen like this one and Berts offering is that they are written by programmers, not engineers or users and have screens full of bling

[HankMcSpank]

OK yes I can see the advantage of this, especially on larger boards. for me it wouldn't be worth it, the only boards I do are 100x 100 max.

The boards I make are typically even smaller than that - 70mm x 40mm ....I mill relatively small traces for SMD (SOT23-5 is as small as I go) & being able to probe is essentaial with a V cutter to get decent track width result.

Z Probing allows me to essentially disregard how flat the copper board is (& the inevitable clamping 'bow')...but more importantly I can disregrad how uneven the machine bed &/or spoiler material may be.

[Fivetide]

I only have art cam so I'm not sure how to import gerber files into it, I've done a google and its not much help, basically I have been creating a pdf bringing in the monochrome to artcam and converting them to vectors.

[HankMcSpank]

gerber files are created by your pcb design software.....what are you using to design the pcb? (I'm not familiar with art cam...cambam has a free trial period & can import gerbers)