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From: John S. <jrs...@op...> - 2012-01-12 04:11:28
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Hi I'm new to this list - just managed to mill a couple of s/s boards, with z-adjust - in retrospect all the code worked amazingly well. Kudos to all the developers. It did raise a couple of questions on how I could do even better. I added the board name and revision on the bottom of the artwork, in positive copper. This looked interesting after being voroni-ised. Wasn't readable. Is there a working way to get this part of the layout cut directly and legible? Negative text would be nice in a solid area. Also - is there a clever way of getting a big drill not in a tool table to mill using a small end mill -rather than drilled? regards, john |
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From: John S. <jrs...@op...> - 2012-01-12 12:29:05
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Hi I'm new to this list - just managed to mill a couple of s/s boards, with z-adjust - in retrospect all the code worked amazingly well. Kudos to all the developers. It did raise a couple of questions on how I could do even better. I added the board name and revision on the bottom of the artwork, in positive copper. This looked interesting after being voroni-ised. Wasn't readable. Is there a working way to get this part of the layout cut directly and legible? Negative text would be nice in a solid area. Also - is there a clever way of getting a big drill not in a tool table to mill using a small end mill -rather than drilled? regards, john |
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From: Patrick B. <pbi...@us...> - 2012-01-15 15:45:10
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Hi John, I don't know any reasonable way of adding text to the board - maybe it works if you set the offset to the radius of your engraving bit, but that is applied to the whole board. I've not used it myself, so I'm not 100% sure what it really does, but I think the --milldrill option might be useful for you. Seems it does everything with the bit that's used for cutting out the board, though - if you have smaller bore holes, it still just uses the big one. You could try to split your excellon drill file in two - one with the big bores, and one with the smaller ones; then run pcb2gcode with big_diameters.cnc and --milldrill, save drill.ngc, and run pcb2gcode another time with the small diameters. Let me know if that works the way you want, it should be easy to add another option to pcb2gcode to do that automatically. -- Patrick Birnzain <pbi...@us...> On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:55:39 +1100 John Sheahan <jrs...@op...> wrote: > Hi > > I'm new to this list - just managed to mill a couple of s/s boards, with z-adjust - > in retrospect all the code worked amazingly well. Kudos to all the developers. > > It did raise a couple of questions on how I could do even better. > > I added the board name and revision on the bottom of the artwork, in positive copper. > > This looked interesting after being voroni-ised. Wasn't readable. > Is there a working way to get this part of the layout cut directly and legible? > Negative text would be nice in a solid area. > > > Also - is there a clever way of getting a big drill not in a tool table to mill using a small end > mill -rather than drilled? > > regards, john > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > RSA(R) Conference 2012 > Mar 27 - Feb 2 > Save $400 by Jan. 27 > Register now! > http://p.sf.net/sfu/rsa-sfdev2dev2 > _______________________________________________ > Pcb2gcode-devel mailing list > Pcb...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/pcb2gcode-devel -- Patrick Birnzain <pbi...@us...> |
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From: John S. <jrs...@op...> - 2012-01-25 23:32:11
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Thanks for your reply Patrick, and sorry for the delay. Took me awhile to make thing mostly work. Here is what I have managed so far. I have now successfully made a DS board with some legible text on it. Stuffing the board and making the hardware and firmware work distracted me. I ended up adding the text to the outline layer. As well as the rectangular mill outline. Exported the outline as gerber from pcb. I wrote a short perl script to read in the outline gerber, and split it to a standard outline (just the rectangle) and also turn the text gerber direct to gcode. That gcode was then processed to height probe the board ( with Etch_Z_adjust.2.2.py) and then cut text after the main board top 'etch'. I have 2 issues to fix with this flow before I would recommend anyone else consider it. firstly - I should have used an otherwise unused layer, not outline. Should be an easy tweak. Secondly, height probing. I'm finding that essential to achieve decent void width control. see http://www.cnczone.com/forums/pcb_milling/82628-cheap_simple_height-probing.html However you can only do this once on a side before etching the board, since you lose the continuous copper electrical connection. This seems to imply that I shoul merge the text gcode fragment into the main milling gcode. I haven't automated that yet. But I'm pretty convinced that the text should be milled as a positive layer, straight down the gerber, and the tracks as a negative layer, ie mill around the gerber. I'm not sure whether I prefer voroni milling or perimeter milling. I do want to minimize mill time so cutting the isolations exactly once seems pretty important. john On 16/01/12 02:45, Patrick Birnzain wrote: > > Hi John, > > I don't know any reasonable way of adding text to the board - maybe it > works if you set the offset to the radius of your engraving bit, but > that is applied to the whole board. > > I've not used it myself, so I'm not 100% sure what it really does, but I > think the --milldrill option might be useful for you. Seems it does > everything with the bit that's used for cutting out the board, though - > if you have smaller bore holes, it still just uses the big one. > You could try to split your excellon drill file in two - one with the > big bores, and one with the smaller ones; then run pcb2gcode with > big_diameters.cnc and --milldrill, save drill.ngc, and run pcb2gcode > another time with the small diameters. > > Let me know if that works the way you want, it should be easy to add > another option to pcb2gcode to do that automatically. > |
