I just got done isolation routing this PCB. It has nothing to do with CNC other than I made it on my CNC machine. I’m still pretty pleased with how it came out though. Hard to take a picture of. It is nice and overcast today, so I used the diffuse light outside to finally get a good shot of it.
Old school looking layout with the curved tracks! What did you use to design it?
Looks like a success.
I can’t quite tell, are the holes drilled yet? (Did you have the machine do the holes too?)
@marmil It worked OK. This is only my second board I ever made this way, so I am still learning about the process. I think I need to make the width of those isolation lines a little wider in the future. It works, but it is tough to keep the solder off adjacent areas. I drilled the holes with a mini high speed drill press that I use for drilling out PCBs. I needed a few different sizes and setting my CNC up to do it would have been more trouble than it is worth to me.
I’m slightly curious too, did you hand draw the lines for the traces? And convert to paths?
@marmil I used KiCAD to do the layout, then I exported a SVG from there, and traced it in InkScape (on another layer - deleting the original when I was done). I Exported a DXF from there, and let DXF2GCode make the G Code. There’s a G Code plugin for KiCAD but I can’t build it yet on my PC due to the software requirements it has. The way I do it now I can modify the design a bit anyways. Which I like.
Right on. Thanks for sharing the process.
@marmil You’re welcome. Thanks for being interested. Here is the circuit working. http://i.imgur.com/wfzJ4PZ.jpg I made it to power up some parts testers I have. Regular battery adapters are usually pretty lousy. That’s where I got the transformer out of. But there was only a diode bridge, and a little smoothing cap in there with it.
@Paul_Shaw I laid it out with KiCAD, then I traced its output in InkScape. I was going for an old style Japanese radio kind of a vibe with it.
@An_R_key Thanks. This board was pretty easy to do. But I designed it to be easy. Big through hole parts, wide traces, gentle curves, nothing too hard really. My CNC machine is nothing spectacular either. Here’s a picture of it routing this job. http://i.imgur.com/wVjPZUm.jpg
@Paul_Frederick Inkscape v.92(v.91?) has a gcode plugin built in as well.
@Kyle_Kerr yeah I’ve tried gcodetools. I do not personally care for it. But if it works for you, then more power to ya.
@Paul_Frederick I’m developing a widget for ChiliPeppr to automatically generate Gcode from KiCad pcb file, I hope to have a working version in a month or so. Even if you don’t use ChiliPeppr to control you CNC, you can copy the Gcode to a file.
ChiliPeppr currenty has this functionality for Eagle board files only.
Follow me or join ChiliPeppr if you are interested.
Just a quick question, I’m looking into pcb milling for simple quick designs right now. And I noticed that everyone is doing isolation routing like this. Except for a few people that are doing “voronoi” isolation routing. Is there a particular reason you picked one over the other?
If I were to guess, it was probably his first thought, and, as he mentioned he was going for a particular look for the board.
Just my half cent though.
With Voronoi isolation, tool paths are normally shorter, which means less milling time and less tool wear, but you need to take in consideration traces width if your design is dependent on that or not.
@ameen.nihad I used to use Eagle but due to a variety of factors I have moved to using KiCAD now. I liked Eagle, I still do, but some things I just don’t like. Those things ended up outweighing what I do like too.
Eagle has a CAD plugin. KiCAD does too. I just can’t build KiCAD’s CAD plugin yet due to a number of difficult for me to meet software requirements.
I run an old OS. I’m not in the mood to upgrade right now either.
@Daid_Braam for me this is the easiest way to generate the G Code. There are certainly better methodologies though I imagine. But they all require software that I do not have access to myself presently. Read: I’m working with the tools that I have.
@Paul_Frederick thanks for your reply. Software won’t be the problem here, as I can write my own. First I need to get those milling bits in.
@Daid_Braam there is quite a bit of CAM software available these days. It ranges from rudimentary, and free, all the way to extremely sophisticated, and expensive too. But if programming is your thing then I suppose there is still quite a bit that you can do there. I’d rather just make chips myself.