Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Laser "route" Printed Circuit Boards

Michael Fagan wrote:

> How would you etch a board using EDM? EDM cuts all the way through from the
> top to bottom.
>

Somebody, I thought it was LPKF, had a machine a decade or so ago that
worked this
way. it had a drum that you wrapped a substrate around. This was a
sheet of some kind
of plastic with the copper foil laminated to it. There must have been
an electrical connection
from the drum to the foil. A whisker of something like Tungsten rode a
carriage parallel to
the drum's axis of rotation. The drum was spun and the whisker blasted
away bits of the
copper foil, eventually completing the PC board pattern.

The copper foil was pretty thin, I think, maybe 1/4 Oz or so. Once it
is vaporized, the substrate
won't be affected.

And, sinker EDM cuts as deep as the electrode is brought down, so it
doesn't cut through unless
you drive the electrode all the way through the material. But, the PC
board thing was definitely
a surface process only.


Jon