This week’s fail is an attempt to retrofit a PCB cutting shear with a geared motor. The project was undertaken by [David Cook]. Incidentally he’s very near and dear to us as his book Robot Building for Beginners got us started with hacking in the first place.

This $200 shearing tool is hand-operated and can cut through boards up to 1/16″ thick. But [David] really had to crank on the thing to make a cut. This often resulted in crooked board edges. He decided to do the retrofit in order to achieve higher precision. He sourced a high-torque motor from eBay for around $50 delivered.

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