PCB-Drill with Dremel & 3D-Printer

thingiverse

This is an attempt to abuse my cheap Prusa i3 clone as a PCB-Drilling machine by temporarily attaching a Dremel next to the extruder. The plan is to let the printer first drill the holes in exact positions and to spray the PCB with photoresist afterwards, to place the foil with the printout of the PCB in a precise manner by using the holes as marks. I design my PCBs with gEDA/pcb and convert it's GCode-export to GCode suitable for 3D-printers with very basic perl-scripts I've written for this. You find them under the thing files. You'll probably find your own way to generate GCode from your preferred PCB-design software. Please share your experiences! I'm currently experimenting with best drilling-RPMs and vertical traveling speeds to make the drill no slip sideways before sinking into the material. Please be aware, that using this thing may damage or even destroy your 3D-printer! As you see, I have strengthened my printer here and there, so please be aware, that your printer may not be as robust as mine. A non-informative video to show this in action can be found here: https://youtu.be/cp50UJrNE9w *UPDATE* I made this a customizable thing, but it does not work for some reason I'm still trying to find out. Please be patient or download OpenSCAD and make your own version at home.