Cutting PCB’s - recommendations, tools etc

[HankMcSpank]

to cut FR4/copper clad board on a cnc machine (eg the outline), I use a chip cutter....

10x Carbide PCB Print Circuit Board End Mill Endmill 2.0mm for CNC / PCB Cutting | eBay

(though I use smaller diameters...1.6mm & 1.2mm)

To do the board outline & ensure it aligns with the tracks & mount holes.

1. Create a DXF of the board including mountholes in your favourite CAD app (ie get your rizla tin, measure it up...create your board outline from your measurements with mount hole locations etc)
2. Use an app called DXF to Script converter (google it)...convert your DXF file to an eagle script file.
3. Within eagle 'board view' run the script you just created in step 2 (file ->script browse for the file you created & run it)

Voila....you've now got your exact outline on the Eagle Dimension layer...now you can route your Eagle PCB tracks around knowing with 100% certainty that everything will come out right!

Once you've finished your Eagle PCB layout...

Run an eagle job to save pcb track outlines as a gerber (within board layout, file-> cam processor->file->open->job select gerb274x.cam then process job - this creates a gerber file of your pcb tracks)

Now open up the gerber file in cambam (this is your pcb tracks), convert from imperial to metric (within cambam ctrl A, ctrl e-> select convert from inches to mm) ....it can all be cam'ed up now (along with your earlier DXF file for the outline mount holes)