PCB Drilling Rig

[davent]

Finally etched some boards yesterday and was time to put some of R.G.'s ideas from a couple other threads into practice.

Needed to find some assistance for viewing pcb's while drilling so took some of those suggestions and kludged this setup together to make it easier and more accurate to drill pcb's.

Purchased a cheap (~$13) USB endoscope from some china-r-us seller on ebay and from LeeValley, to mount the endoscope, got a flashlight holder with a magnetic base for another $9.

The scope software wouldn't cooperate so got a freeware webcam program from Oasis Scientific that covered what i needed. http://www.oasisscientific.com/downloads.html
Also found a small utilty that by Hotkey turns your cursor into  fullscreen  crosshairs then by Hotkey freezes the crosshairs in place and returns the cursor to normal. http://www.brothersoft.com/crosshair-63808.html

First step was to take the carriage from my old style Dremel drillpress and put it back on upside down so it advances up. The carriage on this press, at the last moment before the drill was about to enter the material being drilled, would shift sideways so you were always trying to manually guess/compensate for that defect. Put heatshrink on each arm of the depth gauge yoke and that totally eliminated the swing and in no way hinders the carriage travel.



Flipping the carriage puts the lever arm at a perfect spot for advancing the carriage, a short thumb stroke does the job. Drilling in the normal fashion i've always wished the lever could be mounted far forward of the factory setup, flipping the carriage fixes that issue.

Next secured the Dremel press beside my regular benchtop press so that that press's table could be swung out over the Dremel, secured the table so it wouldn't move.



Taped a piece of recycled thin plastic over the table hole to keep the drilling detrious falling into the Dremel.
Mounted the endoscope in the flashlight holder and that went onto the table above the hole. Tried to center it over the drillbit viewing the endoscope image on the computer but the flashlight base-magnet makes fine tuning impossible.

Secured a pcb to the table so it would get drilled through in a waste area.



Drilled up through the secured pcb- centered the crosshairs on the hole and froze them in place, now have my target for pad centers.

Now it was just a matter of centering a pad under the crosshairs and drilling away, you reduce three dimensions down to two and pretty much eliminating any chance of error.




And a picture through the endoscope (which doesn't capture the overlaid crosshairs).

,

Worked great, just need to find a way to get the laptop closer to the drillpress.

cheers
dave

[R.G.]

Beauty. Much better than the old converted rifle-scope version. 'Course, usb attached cameras didn't even exist when I did the rifle scope.

... neither did **USB**, at all.     

[Jdansti]

Great idea, Dave!  I'll have to try it.

Edit:  Would a laser pointer work, or would the dot be too big?

[bukas]

"Man killed in avalanche..."

it looks a bit tricky to aim on that thing because of angle

[davent]

Hello, Unless you can get the scope perfectly centered over the drillbit you'll get that distortion, in the last picture you can see it exaggerated in the drilled holes that are farther from the center of the endoscope's view, they look like they've been drilled through at an angle.

The crosshairs were matched to the top surface where the drill bit emerged, the table is perpendicular to the drill bit so as long as the crosshairs line up with the center of the pad your fine, worked like a charm.

With the magnetic base i used, it wants to leap out of your hands and attach itself to the table so real hard to fine tune, next time may tweak the alignment by moving the table around but that's pretty limited as well, close enough seems to get you perfectly centered holes with this setup.

Avalanches... crazy out-of-bounds snowboarders?... didn't read the article.
dave

[R.G.]

Edit:  Would a laser pointer work, or would the dot be too big?

Dot's too big for most of them, and it's probably not a good idea to spend a lot of time staring and focused on a laser dot, even if it's less than 5mW. And with magnification you get a lot more accuracy on the positioning of the board.

[Jdansti]

^That makes sense.

[stallik]

Amazing setup!
And now for a laugh, my pcb drill press, cobbled together from bits in my garage. A couple of bits of wood, 2 drawer sliders, an old 12v pcb drill I inherited and a fan. Drill is accurately aligned with a couple of loose cable ties    I just make sure that the drill bit aligns with the hole in the bed and I know it's vertical.  It works really well. Activation is by hand, sliding the central plank up and down. I use an illuminated magnifying glass to see where I'm drilling and the fan blows the dust off to the side - nice and safe. Not! But I only make 1 or 2 a week

[Jdansti]

Very nice!  Are you sure you didn't buy that rig at IKEA?

[davent]

I think more of a Danish aesthetic then Swedish...
Nicely done, always great to be able to put to use what on hand!
dave

[therealfindo]

Amazing setup!
And now for a laugh, my pcb drill press, cobbled together from bits in my garage. A couple of bits of wood, 2 drawer sliders, an old 12v pcb drill I inherited and a fan. Drill is accurately aligned with a couple of loose cable ties    I just make sure that the drill bit aligns with the hole in the bed and I know it's vertical.  It works really well. Activation is by hand, sliding the central plank up and down. I use an illuminated magnifying glass to see where I'm drilling and the fan blows the dust off to the side - nice and safe. Not! But I only make 1 or 2 a week

I just hold the board between my thumb and fingers and use the other hand for the drill...  high-tech.

[stallik]

I just hold the board between my thumb and fingers and use the other hand for the drill...  high-tech.

Used to do the same but the accuracy of my drilling reduced in direct proportion to the increase in Parkinson's vibrato.

[arma61]

Amazing setup!
And now for a laugh, my pcb drill press, cobbled together from bits in my garage. A couple of bits of wood, 2 drawer sliders, an old 12v pcb drill I inherited and a fan. Drill is accurately aligned with a couple of loose cable ties    I just make sure that the drill bit aligns with the hole in the bed and I know it's vertical.  It works really well. Activation is by hand, sliding the central plank up and down. I use an illuminated magnifying glass to see where I'm drilling and the fan blows the dust off to the side - nice and safe. Not! But I only make 1 or 2 a week

I just hold the board between my thumb and fingers and use the other hand for the drill...  high-tech.

What about a couple of springs into the drawer sliders to "recall" the drill-plate up? something like this http://www.imaio.com/ebayit/public/InserzioniClienti/200235/200235-226364-Immagine1.jpg



then you just need to press, and the release is done by the springs!

Ciao

[deadastronaut]

^ good idea on the springs, ...makes life easier..

[stallik]

Got a couple of springs from garden secateurs that I was going to try when I found something to use as a bracket but those look ideal Armando

[amptramp]

Amazing setup!
And now for a laugh, my pcb drill press, cobbled together from bits in my garage. A couple of bits of wood, 2 drawer sliders, an old 12v pcb drill I inherited and a fan. Drill is accurately aligned with a couple of loose cable ties    I just make sure that the drill bit aligns with the hole in the bed and I know it's vertical.  It works really well. Activation is by hand, sliding the central plank up and down. I use an illuminated magnifying glass to see where I'm drilling and the fan blows the dust off to the side - nice and safe. Not! But I only make 1 or 2 a week

Man, you could sell this to a lot of people!  And I know the perfect name for it - the Drillotine (because the action is like a guillotine).

[stallik]

Great name - consider it christened

[R.G.]

In the original upside-down dremel I wrote about, I always wanted to have a foot pedal that raised the drill then the pedal was pressed. That would leave both hands free to move the PCB and then hold it in place. This is easier to do with something like the Drillotine that slides up and down than with a Dremel press that has to have its knob rotated. A bicycle brake cable or similar would do it.

[Electron Tornado]

Dremel makes a drill press that the Dremel tool is mounted in. Works well for PCBs.


Uhh...does that make me a bad DIYer?

[R.G.]

Dremel makes a drill press that the Dremel tool is mounted in. Works well for PCBs.

Dave's setup *is* the Dremel drill press, just re-shuffled so the Dremel tool is below the drill surface, and moving UP. This lets you look straight(ish) down on the to-be-drilled PCB from the top and line things up accurately with a crosshairs from the top. You get better accuracy.

See http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=104522.0