PCB Drilling Rig

[davent]

Greetings from the great frozen north!

Needed to find some assistance for viewing pcb's while drilling so from some ideas put forward by R.G. Keen at diystompboxes in a couple of threads i kludged this setup together to make it easier and more accurate to drill pcb's.

Purchased a cheap (~$13) USB endoscope from some china-r-us seller on ebay and from LeeValley, to mount the endoscope, got a flashlight holder with a magnetic base for another $9.

The scope software wouldn't cooperate so got a freeware webcam program from Oasis Scientific that covered what i needed. http://www.oasisscientific.com/downloads.html
Also found a small utilty that by Hotkey turns your cursor into  fullscreen  crosshairs then by Hotkey freezes the crosshairs in place and returns the cursor to normal. http://www.brothersoft.com/crosshair-63808.html

First step was to take the carriage from my old style Dremel drillpress and put it back on upside down so it advances up. The carriage on this press, at the last moment before the drill was about to enter the material being drilled, would shift sideways so you were always trying to manually guess/compensate for that defect. Put heatshrink on each arm of the depth gauge yoke and that totallyeliminated the swing and in no way hinders the carriage travel.



Flipping the carriage puts the lever arm at a perfect spot for advancing the carriage, a short thumb stroke does the job. Drilling in the normal fashion i've always wished the lever could be mounted far forward of the factory setup, flipping the carriage fixes that issue.

Next secured the Dremel press beside my regular benchtop press so that that press's table could be swung out over the Dremel, secured the table so it wouldn't move.



Taped a piece of recycled thin plastic over the table hole to keep the drilling detrious falling into the Dremel.
Mounted the endoscope in the flashlight holder and that went onto the table above the hole. Tried to center it over the drillbit, viewing the endoscope image on the computer but the flashlight base-magnet makes fine tuning impossible.

Secured a pcb to the table so it would get drilled through in a waste area.



Drilled up through the secured pcb- centered the crosshairs on the hole and froze them in place, now have my target for pad centers.

Now it's just a matter of centering a pad under the crosshairs and drilling away, you reduce a three dimensional view down to two and pretty much eliminate any chance of error.




And a picture through the endoscope (which doesn't capture the overlaid crosshairs).

,

Worked great, just need to find a way to get the laptop closer to the drillpress.

dave

[das234]

Ooh La La!  That's slick.  In a couple years when my eyes get a little worse, I'm coming to your place to do my drilling.

[rullywowr]

That is very impressive. Kind of looks like a drone strike and the PCB holes are the target.

[lincolnic]

That's some badass DIY spirit. Great stuff.

[jubal81]

Now that's some clever stuff. What a great project.

[Cortexturizer]

literally speechless.

[gordo]

It's overkill to the point of obscene...which is what I love about it.  The creativity around this place never fails to amaze me.  Very nicely done.  And as we get closer to the end of the year just wanted to mention what a thrill it is to hang around this place with everyone!!!!

[culturejam]

I would never have thought of that or been able to put it together. Well done!

[billstein]

Wow. Impressive.

[pickdropper]

I totally approve of this.  Wonderful.