Every time I see surface mount components I have an internal debate about pretty vs fiddly.
Admittedly I was considering building a reflow oven if I got heavily into hobiest electronics again which would make that debate moot.
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I bough one a cheap one from China and with a few mods it runs great
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Nice. I’ll have to look into that.
I’m planning on modding my 3d printer so it can act as a PCB mill and then I can either use plastic film to mill out a solder paste template or I will also make a paste applicator tool for the printer.
I have a SnapMaker v1 that can do that. I’ve never really liked it. It takes forever, even if you just mill out around the traces and leave the negative space. Plus the thinner carbide bits are $3-4. If you don’t snap them off, they wear out after a few boards. It’s good for super rapid prototyping (hours instead of days) when you’re playing with finicky designs like trace antennas. Otherwise you’re much better off just ordering the boards. Boards from the fab house have much better design tolerances, they’re actually cheaper, and you get soldermask/silkscreen
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And if you need them fast, you can still do wonders with press and peel, a modified laminator, and good old Ferric Chloride
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Haha, almost all of my boards are hand assembled using a manual pick and place, solder paste stencil. I have found that other than same day prototyping I tend to get boards made externally due to multiple reasons including accurate soldermask and silkscreen as well as plated through holes.
All of my day prototypes I manufacture using UV photo resist, development and uv soldermask if needed and solder rivets for through holes.
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Tbh I doubt I’d use it much I just like building stuff. Blah blah… Journey not destination… 
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I made a pen holder attachment for the same reason. A regular printer is way better at drawing a 2d image but it was fun to make.
But that’s good feedback thanks guys.
You can DIY apply solder mask and then mill out the pads, you can get special spring loaded bits that let it cut through the mask but not the copper if you want but at that point ordering them online is definitely the winner.
I saw someone use a etch resistant pen on a 3d printer and Ferric Chloride with fairly decent results but the lamination method definitely was faster and higher resolution.
Seems like a cool machine. How’s the Lazer on it? That’s one attachment I hadn’t really looked at because of safety / I didn’t think the smaller ones would be that useful.
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If you really want something t I do this the bes thing I’ve seen is the wegster mill
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Wegstr ?
A YouTube video of that is actually what inspired me to have a crack. I doubt I’ll hit anywhere near that quality but should be fun to try.
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Yep thats it
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The wegstr is what I saw the special bit on. Watching there milling videos is quite relaxing (well any machining tbh) imo.
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It’s pretty good. I switched to the 1.6W as soon as it came out because the 300mW was very meh. You’re not gonna cut through anything substantive, but it engraves very nicely on a variety of materials. I threw away my samples but I tried it on Baltic Birch, untreated leather, and crackers. It could even handle cermark on metal, considering I got reasonable results with mustard and vinegar. I have a centrifugal fan and some accordion ducting that I run out to a window when engraving.
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Oh, we’re over here now
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Keeping you all on your toes
Kinda drifted away from @ChildApple xAC vehicle install… and got a little more PCB milling, 3D printers and laser engravery
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