Jun 30, 2015 | By Alec
Alongside the fantastic growth of the 3D printing community, making itself seems to be steadily becoming more popular. Perhaps this is in part due to 3D printing itself, or perhaps because parts are becoming cheaper and easier to find than ever before. This growth has only made it more evident that developing PCBs still isn’t easy, but there is a solution – and you already have it on your desktop. For Norwegian maker Arvid Mortensen has developed a clever solution to turn a 3D printer into an etching machine.
Now of course, there are a number of complicated ways to use a 3D printer to make PCBs, but this must have been the easiest we’ve seen so far. Essentially, Arvid has simply relies on a magic marker and a steel rod. Starting out with a copper plate, he covers this with a magic marker to cover all the parts that shouldn’t be etched away. His printer itself is equipped with the steel rod to scratch away the ink in the exactly pattern of the PCB.
And how, you might wonder, do you get your hands on the Gcode for a PCB? Well, this was generated using a special platform called FlatCAM, a piece of software specifically designed for milling PCBs. However, this technique works so well spindles, mills and so on aren’t even needed – the 3D printer does all the work.
And as you can see in the clip below, the resulting scratched copper plate is subsequently bathed in ferric choride for a while. This etches away the copper to create the pattern of the PCB. Finally removing the excess ink afterwards, and you’ve got yourself one of the coolest looking home-made PCBs we’ve seen in a while. What’s more, if you already have a 3D printer at home, this is probably the cheapest and easiest way to develop custom PCBs, so definitely give it a go!
Posted in 3D Printers
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