Gallery, Projects and General > How do I??
PCB pad cutter
Joules:
I still like the idea of a small pilot drill, so you have a hole for though wires from the rear, think of it as custom Veroboard for fat fingers. Will get in the workshop and make a tool, nice post by the way.
vtsteam:
The point of these type cutters is to mount multiple leads on a single land, thus reducing the need for point to point jumpers. Or connected lands, which can't be cut with this kind of bit.. Mounting components from the non-foil side through a hole and trying to do the same thing would require a larger hole to accommodate multiple leads. Where a single lead is mounted into a too large hole the component tends to flop over or fall out with the board foil side up making soldering very difficult.
If you do drill with an oversized drill, it would work better if the components were mounted through the hole on the foil side so they at least tend to stay in place while soldering. The advantage there over these non-pilot hole cutters would be that lead length does not have to be shortened before soldering, but excess leads can poke through the hole and be clipped off after soldering. And the self centering of the bit.
Mike K:
--- Quote from: vtsteam on January 07, 2021, 11:22:20 PM ---From the appearance of the board, looks like it wandered one attempt, then grabbed the copper foil in the others, indicating feed too fast for the rpm and or board moving.
--- End quote ---
That obvious one doesn't count; I didn't have the board resting flat. The tearout one in the upper-left was never felt, it really tore easily...possibly due to being cheap board from China.
Mike K:
By the way, the guy who's image is shown in post #1 used a sharpened broken drill bit with one tooth and got no tearout whatsoever. Magnified images of his cuts look great.
His bit:
Maybe I should revisit my drill bit grind attempt. Or maybe he's using better quality boards.
vtsteam:
He ground proper tooth shape with flat rake and adequate end clearance angle, and likely proper radial angle (not visible). The same can be done on a homemade bit.
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