PCB alignment base for milling

grabcad

Milling a dual-layered printed circuit board is quite daunting without a suitable setup in place. The copper layer on the clad laminated sheet is incredibly thin, necessitating that the surface of the copper sheet be perfectly parallel to the movement of the Z-axis for even milling. The tool used for isolating copper traces also requires an extremely fine tip (usually 0.1mm or 0.2mm). For dual-layered printed circuit boards, this process is even more complicated. After milling the first side and flipping it over to the second side, the CNC machine must have a precise reference point (0 and 0 on the X and Y axes) in order to achieve accurate results. To make this process easier, I designed a setup (base or fixture) with a surface that has been milled with a flat end mill to ensure it is parallel to the Z-axis movement, and two edges that are parallel to the X and Y axes. With these three references, you can accurately mill a dual-layered printed circuit board. Please take a look at the video for step-by-step instructions.