Jack of all trades, master of none, as the saying goes, and that’s especially true for PCB prototyping tools. Sure, it’s possible to use a CNC router to mill out a PCB, and ditto for a fiber laser. But neither tool is perfect; the router creates a lot of dust and the fiberglass eats a lot of tools, while a laser is great for burning away copper but takes a long time to burn through all the substrate. So, why not put both tools to work?
Of course, this assumes you’re lucky enough to have both tools available, as [Mikey Sklar] does. He doesn’t call out which specific CNC router he has, but any desktop machine should probably do since all it’s doing is drilling any needed through-holes and hogging out the outline of the board, leaving bridges to keep the blanks connected, of course.
Once the milling operations are done, [Mikey] switches to his xTool F1 20W fiber laser. The blanks are placed on the laser’s bed, the CNC-drilled through holes are used as fiducials to align everything, and the laser gets busy. For the smallish boards [Mikey] used to demonstrate his method, it only took 90 seconds to cut the traces. He also used the laser to cut a solder paste stencil from thin brass shim stock in only a few minutes. The brief video below shows the whole process and the excellent results.
In a world where professionally made PCBs are just a few mouse clicks (and a week’s shipping) away, rolling your own boards seems to make little sense. But for the truly impatient, adding the machines to quickly and easily make your own PCBs just might be worth the cost. One thing’s for sure, though — the more we see what the current generation of desktop fiber lasers can accomplish, the more we feel like skipping a couple of mortgage payments to afford one.
Nice PCB holding jig !
“But oftentimes better than a master of one.”
That opening misquote always itches at me so here I am commenting… Shakespear said “Jack of all trades but master of none, oftentimes better than a master of none”. It’s a fine example of a quote that is totally now used to represent the very opposite of its intent! That said CNC and Fibre is a droolworthy combo.
“Shakespeare” even.
“one” even.
No, “one” odd. “Two” even.
Lol yup
“Shakespeare” even.
This one doesn’t count. He spelled his own name a half-dozen different ways, himself.
Spelling back then was even more fluid than Modern American Internet Spelling is today, Noah Webster notwithstanding.
Citation needed.
master of one, not none. Else, effectively, the quote doesn’t make any sense.
Maybe instead of spreading misinformation you could have used google. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/jack-of-all-trades.html
How is that misinformation? You’re defining the term “jack of all trades” whereas OP is talking about a quote from Shakespeare that includes this term: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11219058-a-jack-of-all-trades-is-a-master-of-none
The part master of none didn’t become a phrase until long after shakespeare had died, can you cite the work where shakespeare wrote that phrase?
Interesting. I never saw that phrase as having a negative connotation.
In my world, I’ve always taken that (partial) quote to mean that one is sufficiently proficient (“good enough”) at many things to get anything done, where a master can do only one thing.
Cross-functional knowledge is key to my survival and instrumental in the enjoyment of my hobbies and work (and frugality). Jack of all trades is aspirational to me. Master of none is aspirational to me. Adding the rest (“one”, not “none”) of the quote reinforces the meaning rather than negating it.
Today I learned that throughout my life, people have been insulting me and I was just too ignorant to notice. If only I were a master of literature, I’d have known. :-)
Shakespeare never said that. The “longer” version is a modern construction:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/408782/is-jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none-really-just-a-part-of-a-longer-proverb#508907
“Oftentimes better than a master of one”, not “none”
Breadth vs. Depth! Which of course it is all relative to the complexity of the problem to solve, or “trade” as it were. All variations can be valid and useful. I can see that for a collection of moderately complex jobs, a “Jack of all trades and master of some may sound better than the master of none as in hiring one guy to do multiple jobs decently well, seems attractive. On the other hand, I do prefer my surgeon or plane mechanics or pilots to be masters of solely one job!
We have a 1064 nm pulsed laser but never managed to properly cut copper or FR4 (it heavily chars the latter though). What wavelength and settings are used here?
hihi,
I’m Mikey the video author.
My experience was the same with FR1. The board chars and smokes, but even the 20W xTool F1 Ultra laser can get through it. It was 3x slower than doing EdgeCuts on the CNC.
All the settings are on the github page under laser settings and called out in the video. Each step is using 30 kHz.
https://github.com/mikeysklar/cnc-fiber-laser-pcb
All the cuts and engraves in the video are 30 kHz. Details on the github page or video for power/speed/pass settings. Also a JSON config file is available for folks with the same model (xTool F1 Ultra).
https://github.com/mikeysklar/cnc-fiber-laser-pcb#laser-settings
aka Factotum.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/factotum
and at $4000+ price tag buy 5 so you have plenty to spare…….