Router for cutting PC Boards

[Rhodan]

Sorry!

I use Diptrace to create the circuits and output DXF. Diptrace has an option to output the edges of the circuit (outline of traces etc) which is perfect for importing into a CAM program and applying MOPs to.


There's also QCad which outputs GCode directly. I don't know about the current version but the one I have (couple years old now) had horribly inefficient cutting strategy. Instead of simply following the outline of a trace it would look at each line segment seperately, plunge and cut, then retract before cutting the next segment. Its DXF/Gerber etc isn't (or wasn't) suitable either since the lines are very wide. When reduced to single point the segments no longer line up at the end points. Diptrace was cheaper than getting the most recent QCad and the demo showed me its near-perfect output so I went that route.

Oh, Diptrace does have one glitch with its output. There are usually a couple of redundant line segments in the DXF though its not hard to find and delete them. When I first tried there were LOTS of redundant lines but the author has calmed that down a lot. Now I usually find 2 extras in about 70% of the exports instead of 8-20 in every export.

Here's an example of the output (in Visual Mill) with two redundant lines highlighted in yellow.

P.S. They're easy to spot once you get used to looking for them. Each trace should have only one origin dot and the extra lines each have their own. At most I spend 1-2 minutes searching and deleting when they appear.

[Rhodan]

BTW: Since not everyone has Visual Mill, I was playing with VCarve Pro to see if I could use it for PCB milling. With one exception, I find it as good or better than VM for getting from DXF to Gcode.

VCP has layers which makes it easier to seperate the routing artwork from the drilling (equal to VM).

VCP has a preview so you can be sure the bit does what you think it should. VCPs preview is also very fast (VM wins due to flexible control over the preview though I usually only care about the end result when doing PCBs).

One clear VM advantage is in selecting holes for drilling. It has a tool that selects all holes of a supplied radius or min and max radiuses (radii?).

Oh, and I just remembered, VM inserts the tool diameter as a comment into the GCode while VCP does not. Not quite as convenient for those folks that don't have a tool table printed and handy.

So if you don't have VM and have VCP, you don't need another CAM package.

[CountZero]

GCAM is free and can import gerbers: http://gcam.js.cx/index.php/Main_Page

I have yet to cut a board with the output but it won't cost you much to find out if it works for you..