Joe's 1000x600x200 steel and aluminium router started

[devmonkey]

You have. It's called a CNC router. The trick is making the machine and your ability to register a pre-etched circuit board on it accurate enough. Something I haven't even atempted yet.

I do like using the solder paste. That and a gas soldering iron with a hot-air head makes hand-soldering SOIC chips nice sand easy and the 1.27mm (thats 0.05 inch for our 19th century readers) pad spacing is reliably makeable using the toner-transfer method for DIY circuit boards....without holes!!!

Kit

For crude through hole boards with thick traces like this one I use the toner transfer method with a £50 Brother laser printer from Argos, good results and takes <15 mins to make a board including etch and drill, I drill by hand on a tiny toy CNC machine. This process works well for double sided boards as well.



For higher resolution boards I use a CNC photo method on the same toy machine. Spray the copper with black paint then use a low power UV laser in the machine to isolation route it. Wash off the ablated paint then etch. If the board requires any drilling and/or is double sided I use a fixture so to re-locate it after etch. This process takes a bit longer but I can achieve 0.2mm features/tracks.

Anything more complicated with >2 layers gets sent to China, even if just a proto. All the SMD stuff gets soldered with hot air, agree very easy if your solder paste isn't like gritty chewing gum.