UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum - View Single Post

Mike. Watterson · 16th Jul 2019, 6:11 pm

A computer controlled "mill" that uses a Dremmel or similar is nice. Also will do the holes.
I've only used Toner transfer to do radio scales. I decided years ago I hated etching. About 12 years ago the place I worked bought a cheap "mill" kit. We used Eagle and then a custom program to generate the milling file. It was 900MHz circuits on 0.8mm fibreglass and using PCB coils & capacitors.

Small PCBs from kiCad or Eagle are cheap to get in China and good enough for fine pitch SMD ICs (easy to solder, tin board and then a 3mm or 4mm flat tip to reflow after tacking the corners. Sometimes a dab of glue first. Also home etched need pins instead of PTH and are rarely good enough for 0.05" or 0.5mm tracks.

16th Jul 2019, 6:11 pm	#15
Mike. Watterson Heptode Join Date: Dec 2014 Location: Limerick, Ireland. Posts: 901	Re: PCB production using toner transfer A computer controlled "mill" that uses a Dremmel or similar is nice. Also will do the holes. I've only used Toner transfer to do radio scales. I decided years ago I hated etching. About 12 years ago the place I worked bought a cheap "mill" kit. We used Eagle and then a custom program to generate the milling file. It was 900MHz circuits on 0.8mm fibreglass and using PCB coils & capacitors. Small PCBs from kiCad or Eagle are cheap to get in China and good enough for fine pitch SMD ICs (easy to solder, tin board and then a 3mm or 4mm flat tip to reflow after tacking the corners. Sometimes a dab of glue first. Also home etched need pins instead of PTH and are rarely good enough for 0.05" or 0.5mm tracks.