Reading Hackaday is great! You get so many useful tips from watching other people work, it’s truly changed nearly everything about the way I hack, especially considering that I’ve been reading Hackaday for the past 15 years. Ideas, freely shared among peers, are the best of the free and open-source hardware community. But there’s a dark downside: I’m going CNC mill shopping.
It all started with [Robin]’s excellent video and website tutorial on his particular PCB DIY procedures. You see, I love making PCBs at home, because I’m unafraid of chemistry, practiced with a rolling pin and iron, and super-duper impatient. If I can get a board done today, I’m not waiting a week, even if that means an hour of work on my part.
Among other things, he’s got this great technique with a scriber pen and a cleverly designed registration base that make it easy for him to do nearly perfectly aligned two-sided boards with a resolution approaching etching. The ability to make easy double-sided boards, with holes drilled, makes milling attractive, but the low resolution of v-cutter milled boards has been the show-stopper for me. If that’s gone, maybe it’s time to take a serious look.
And heck, making PCBs is really just the tip of the iceberg for what I’d want to do with a CNC mill. Currently, I do dodgy metalworking with an x-y table and a drill press, some of which may someday land me in the hospital. But if I had a mill, I’d be doing hackaday
