Addressing the questions about what feeds to use when milling the boards, we decided to throw together a little table with feed recommendations for the tools Cirqoid uses to mill and drill PCB laminate. These are the values that worked well for us. Happy milling!

Drills

Drill bits are only used to drill holes. They are supplied with green stop rings.

Drill diameter	Feed
0.2-0.3mm	250 mm/min
0.4-4.0mm	300 mm/min
4.0-5.0mm	200 mm/min

 

15º milling end mills

These end mills are used for isolation milling.

End mill diameter	Feed XY	Feed Z	Feed arcs
0.1mm	75 mm/min	50 mm/min	30%
0.13mm	150 mm/min	75 mm/min	30%
0.18mm	400 mm/min	150 mm/min	30%
0.254mm	1000 mm/min	300 mm/min	30%

 

90º V-tools

90º V...

One of the questions that we've been getting lately is how do you deal with the boards, populated with the components on both layers? Do you have to glue them, so that they don't fall off? How do you rework them if you need afterwards? How do you dispense solder paste on the second layer, so that the first layer doesn't get smeared? All of those are very good questions.

Actually, this feature wasn't supported by Cirqoid until recently. There were two obstacles there:

• software support - this required some hacking with the Gerber files to get both layers dispensed
• hardware support, i.e. having a possibility to lift the board while dispensing and placing the second layer, so that the first layer doesn't touch Cirqoid's bed

Software support was introduced in cirQWizard a while ago. As for the hardware, all new Cirqoids include a pack of...

In our last post we answered the question if Cirqoid can be used to prototype boards with 0402 components. We didn't have to wait long before we got the next logical question - is that the limit or can 0201 components be considered for use on Cirqoid? If in the case of 0402 we were expecting them to be handled without any noticeable issues, this time we weren't sure. So we quickly sketched a little PCB with a couple of 0201 resistors to find this out. We didn't have time for a board with some meaningful functionality, but to add an additional purpose to this little project we decided to answer another question, which we get occasionally - how small board can be made on Cirqoid.

The board that we made for this experiment measures 9x10mm. We feel like we could've gone even...

It's really been a very long while since our last blog post. Such long that we even got an email asking if we are still in business. Fear not - we absolutely certainly are. We've been struggling for quite some time to meet the demand on Cirqoids, so we focused our efforts on streamlining the production. It meant we had to sacrifice some other things and blogging was among them. Things start to look brighter now, so here we are with a new post.

Project background

We got a LIDAR-Lite laser range sensor and we wanted to see what it is capable of:

We also had a 2.2" LCD display module with ILI9341 controller lying around and wanted to see if it can be used as a generic output device for small projects like that - something a bit fancier...

This post was contributed by one of our customers - Jean-Charles Felix. He reviews the various approaches to creating PCBs for prototyping purposes and shares his first impressions from his brand new Cirqoid machine, as well as suggestions on using it. Thanks a lot Jean-Charles for sharing this with us and the rest of community! We really appreciate this!

J’ai assez fréquemment besoin de créer des platines à vocation particulière.

La methode bricoleur

Quand il s’agit de circuits assez simples, au pas de 2.54mm, on peut toujours tenter de les réaliser sur des plaques « d’expérimentation » comme vous pouvez le voir sur cette image tirée de mon blog http://motoelectrique.blog4ever.com

 

Bien sûr, ça fonctionne et cela ne revient pas trop cher (quoique je trouve disproportionné le prix de ces plaques d’expérimentation).

Les problèmes de ce genre de réalisation sont toutefois nombreux:

• une fiabilité plus difficile...

Every once in a while people ask us if it's possible to see Cirqoid in real life or try to use it. If you happen to be in Warsaw in March, that's exactly what you can do! We are coming to Makerland event to help everyone interested to get onboard of PCB prototyping. There's also plenty of stuff to see and do if you have making-inclined mind.

At Cirqoid station we (that is you) will making battery powered thermometers. This is what they are going to look like:

Everyone will be provided with an access to Cirqoid and all the necessary things (like board material, components, etc.) to mill, drill and bring this board to life! All this with friendly advices and suggestions of Cirqoid gurus!

Looking forward to see you there on March 17th!

We've been fairly quite for the last couple of months. It's not because nothing has been happening here - that's exactly the other way around.

It's been a while since our previous project idea post, so it's time for a new idea. Here in Latvia it's autumn. So we had to turn the heating system on to be able to keep on producing Cirqoids for you...

Many of you have asked for a demo video, showing what exactly the machine can do. So, as promised in our previous blog post, here's the video showing how the PCB from that post was made:

We'd really like to know your thoughts - please leave them in the comments.

First project that we are sharing with you is a demo of using I²C communications on ATMega16 microcontroller and controlling RGB LEDs using the same controller...