How To Make PCB With A Laser Engraver XTOOL D1 Pro
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 เม.ย. 2023
- I teamed up with Carlos from Retro Upgrade to see if we can make a PCB using a Laser Engraver. We used the Xtools D1 Pro 20w Laser Cutter Engraver
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Richard
Thank you for having me on the channel Richard always a lot of fun 😁
I bought a 5.5 watt laser engraver just to learn about laser engraving so now I'm going to try making pcb boards; it may take extra passes but I think it will work! Thanks for making this video, and the small mistakes you made here and there are actually very helpful. Thanks again!
How'd you make out ?
Sadly I have not tried yet, so many things have gotten in the way :(@@SomeTechGuy666
New video! Thank you Richard!
Great experimentation!
This is a very interesting demo and experiment. Definitely worth persisting with. Would be worth scrubbing the copper with dishwashing detergent and a scouring pad to make sure there is excellent adhesion between the paint or pen before ablation.
To have any chance of getting a good etch you have to brighten the copper cladding before you mask it. Clean copper is critical.
You cant cut clear acrylic with a diode laser because it has the wrong wavelength.
You need a C02 laser to cut clear acrylic because it has the right wavelength.
If you want to cut acrylic with a diode laser, the acrylic needs to be coloured.
I have a nice butterfly etched into the desk under my laser etcher from trying to do 3/8 (10mm?) acrylic
Absolutely awesome
Interesting video, even the accidental bringing in white paint was good to see how it differs.
Have you or Carlos tried using a highly oxidized, copper clad FR4 board? I’m curious,m… If the copper layer was oxidized enough so as to reduce the reflectivity, it seems like that you could skip the painting and chemical etching steps and basically remove the non trace areas with the laser. Then use a mild acid to remove the oxidation from the freshly defined copper traces. Any info will be hugely helpful and greatly appreciated. I’m getting ready to click the check out button and get my own laser cutting rig and want give the pcb making a try asap. Thanks for all the videos
I think you can actually use the laser to burn through the holes. It would make it easier to drill over it at the correct place later. Definitely would give it a try. If you guys are making another video about this topic, please try making a SMD circuit board! I would like to see the results. I also want to suggest to lower the speed a bit, so that the machine can etch the board easier. Thank you for the video and keep up the great work!
That is a neat idea, to have the laser create the holes - instead of drilling later.
As Tims_Projetcs already stated:
"You cant cut clear acrylic with a diode laser because it has the wrong wavelength.
You need a C02 laser to cut clear acrylic because it has the right wavelength.
If you want to cut acrylic with a diode laser, the acrylic needs to be coloured."
So it is not just "light". The wavelength matters.
I think the breaks in the circuit is due to scratches in the copper by the looks of when you cleaned it off, black still remained in some parts of the plate or was that just thicker maker fluid?
Apparently there is a technique where people print a mirrored circuit on an acetate sheet using a laser printer, then transfer it to a board using a document laminator by sandwiching the two together.
Then they etch the PCB as usual in the acid bath.
Hi sir.... currently I'm using laser 500mw....& Try to engrave PCB board....but it didn't work or burn the pcb ...is it because of the watt value or setting the speed on lasergbrl software....your response is highly appreciated sir
That's very interesting. I actually had this idea a few years ago as well. Bought a hobbiest CNC machine with the laser attachment and a ton of copper pads for prototyping. Unfortunately, it turned out that the power supply I had to drive the laser wasn't powerful enough and I didn't have enough understanding of how the software worked to get it going. I knew I would have to invert the image but I was trying with laser grbl and my machine came with one of the steppers and rails on the opposite side from what it's supposed to be. That, and the drivers seemed to misbehave with either my OS at the time or the program itself. There is a way to reverse the motors through software I found but at the same time I got my first 3d printer so I invested my time in it instead. Cool to see someone actually experimenting with this process. I also wanted to add the idea of possibly sticking some shipping labels on the copper pad rather than paint or marker? I know, flammable properties and all but curious to know if it would work. Maybe even vinyl stickers.
was it a stepcraft machine??..i've got one sitting unassembled..i was going to mill the copper. never got around to it. inspired to have a play after seeing this.
@@raindogred Mine is the Sainsmart 3018 or 2018; something or other. Relatively small bed and 3D printed head for the router it came with. Of course, I didn't know this at the time of ordering but it seems solid enough. I still have mine on my bench. I've repurposed it to hold packing envelopes for shipping products out along with random cables I don't know what to do with.
The laser, I bought separately since it was said to be compatible. I went with the best one they had at the time figuring it would be the best idea. Unfortunately after putting everything together I realized the connector had an extra prong in the laser. The whole process became nothing but a headache so I've set it aside momentarily thinking now and then to give it another shot. After seeing this, it had the opposite effect on me. Interesting, yeah, but I think about how intricate for my particular machine it would be to do a double-sided board or line up the drilling holes correctly after switching out the heads.
Interesting. Although that laser is not really suitable for acrylic, I wonder whether using a non-reflective background (black painted aluminium etc) would have improved results. Acetone is great, after use you can walk around on the ceiling. Seriously though, exercise caution.
If you get a chance can you try the Cricket engraving machine and see what happens with that
can you cut holes?
I think you would usually use a high pressure water cutter to cut acrylic as it doesn't produce any heat
That would be cool to get one to review :P , but they are usually huge machines and extreme pressures :P, and ofc 100k$ + 😆, if some one wants to send one we will gladly try it out 😋
An you can also cut metal and other materials as well ;)
Water jets are pretty pricey.
Thnankyou
i made a paste using...copper powder and soldering wire grinded and applied it over thin fiber glass rasin layer....after 5hat i heat it...working good from many years.....
i used small stancil...to apply it....😁😂
I use a black Tesco laundry pen, works fine
Heya, oh yeah that's nice way to make your own pcb espacally wen you have 1 single broken pcb and can't bay the broken pcb any more
Guys, I think you should try 'Matt Black' exhaust spray paint if you can get it en Las Canarias.
Do you mean the heat resistant stuff ? 500+ C?
@@RetroUpgrade Yes, Carlos. It has a very matt surface and being black it should absorb the laser light very well. I had intended to try it myself when I finally get my 10W laser set up. Ill health and house move have delayed me for a year. I would be very interested to see the result. It may work, it may not.
@@grahambambrook313 Will try to find some of that paint, used it before in Sweden when i Modded cars :P, painted various Engine parts with the stuff :)
ill report back to you when i have a result :)
Exhaust paint is high temperature paint. So it is made to resist heat and burning.
@@RetroUpgrade Cheers! I also meant to try just doing it the way people do with an engraving tool to just outline the tracks and pads to leave good ground planes. Of course, this assumes that the paint will not be affected by the etchant, which I do not know as yet.😁
Diode lasers will not cut clear acrylic. You need a CO2 laser
Yeah we thought that but a subscriber on another video suggested some ways it would work. We tried both those suggestions and they didn't work, but at least we tried them.
@@LearnElectronicsRepair You can cut opaque acrylic in some colours, and deep red clear acrylic will cut and engrave. Not a great idea to do a lot of plastics cutting without good fume extraction. PVC and ABS(I think) can give off really nasty fumes.
An IR laser will cut the clear stuff, only because the acrylic is IR opaque. Visible light lasers just shoot right through, and at best, melt a bit with the heat reflected from the table.
Best practice is to use darker coloured materials if at all possible. And if you can elevate the material a little, its easier to tell if its gone through.
"How to get blind and inhale nasty fumes"
smoke cigarettes while watching porn?
@@LearnElectronicsRepair 😂😂
There’s a content creation idea: Porn, Narrated by Sir Richard
“She’s really wuuuurking that c**k, yeah??”😂😂😂
thank you for your concern :), still not blind doing stupid shit 30 years now :P
all jokes aside you are right you need to be careful with your health :)
How about you buy the boards pre coated with photoresist and just laser that off, expose the whole board and etch that with nice hot Ferric Chloride ? or obviously use a matte black spray paint or perhaps any colour of matte paint would do as the worst you could choose is going to be white ! As you seem to have plenty of power headroom tweak the settings for better resolution ? great video....cheers.
It was mentioned in the video that someone on the team was tasked with buying matt black spray paint... and got white 😉
@@LearnElectronicsRepair wonder who that was LOL !
It is OK to touch your mask up before you etch.
Definitely !
Nice but we want to see copper burning ! laser finished pcd.
If you burn copper you're going to burn the fiberglass substrate too and that's going to cause carbon tracking.
@@1pcfred That is what we found - and discussed near the beginning. The copper is too reflective for the laser to cut, at least with the 10W lasers we tried on previous videos on this channel. The Xtools D1 Pro 20W *can* cut through the copper with a slow speed and a couple of passes, but the other problem is that as soon as you do get through the copper the laser then goes through the substrate like cheese. Probably not what you were trying to do.
@@LearnElectronicsRepair A burned through board would be a novelty. Kind of like a hanging garden circuit I'd imagine. Parts is parts. Pieces is pieces!
@@1pcfred Right, haven't considered this !
@@BigBoss-rh7zq carbonized substrate is a big problem with burned PCBs when things go wrong electrically. So it is a common concern. Whatever the resin is they make the boards out of chars. Carbon isn't a great conductor but it is conductive. They make resistors out of the stuff. So it turns the board into a resistor. That's not good.
This is too much work why not just save yourself 60% of the time and use presensitized pcb.
That is terribly bad quality on completely useless large structures.... Why even bother.