How to make Carbide Motion cut out a PCB?

CNC Machines Nomad
1

@robgrz

Any tips on how to get Carbide Motion to cut the board outline to full thickness, so that it separates “my board” from the stock? The outline was correctly positioned, but the V cutter only went deep enough to score and remove the copper (maybe 0.3mm out of 1.6 mm thick). How do you get CM to do one final pass (with a flat end mill?) to chase down this V channel and cut the finished board away from the stock?

Also, maybe another topic, but what about supporting drills of different sizes? Carbide Copper doesn’t let me pick more than one tool. So I have to under-drill the holes, or they won’t get drilled at all (tool rules). But some need to be fairly large, and a 0.5mm bit isn’t worth more than a pilot hole.

Thanks,
Chris

2

Can you share some photos of what you’re trying to do with cutting the outline of the board? In copper, in the Board Outline section, you can select a flat endmill (like the #112) and that will cut the profile completely.

Check out copperbeta.carbide3d.com, we added the option to do a drill table.

2 Likes
3

Thanks for the quick response. Two questions…

  • Is copperbeta.carbide3d.com different than copper.carbide3d.com? I’ve been using the latter. Is this a new update?

  • Last time, I used the V tool (probably not a good idea) and the outline only scored the perimeter. This time, I selected Custom, set to 1.6mm for a 1/16th inch mill, and then picked a depth of 1.5mm. But it did nothing for me. When it ran the tool, it just sent the carraige to mid-zero, did a short peck drill in the air, and then “finished”. My outline file is 21KB, and looks like valid G code, but I don’t see a preview, and it didn’t really accomplish anything when it ran.

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Actually, I take that back. I was looking at an old version of the file. Here is the latest, which explains the single peck, although I don’t know why this is all that was generated…

( PCB Cuts )
( Generated by Carbide Copper )
( Material Size )
( X= 152.400, Y= 101.600, Z= 1.580 )
()
G17
G21
G54
G90
G00 Z3.000
M05
M30
%

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@Jorge I should also add that my outline is concave in some areas. Is it possible that’s the issue? I was able to run a standard rectangular outline on my first board, but this one is just not processing correctly. Can I email you a Gerber file so you can see how it processes?

Or another thought… can you confirm what the export settings are? Should the board outline be a Gerber 274X just like the copper? Copper seems to work fine, but the outline NC file isn’t even close to the complexity of the PCB outline’s Gerber 274X file.

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@Jorge @WillAdams Bumping the post to provide a little more info… I tried 2 other PCBs to see if they were imported into Carbide Copper correctly. One simple rectangular board was NOT correct. The basic dimensions seemed correct, but the top right corner had the cutter heading north, instead of running down the right side. So the bottom and left edges were correct, but top and (especially) right were really messed up.

The third board is a rectangle with beveled edges, so a little more complex. But it seems to import correctly - at least the preview looks dead on.

I know my exports for all of these use the same process, so the files are made the same way, yet 1 works and two do not. So I think that proves that there’s an issue with importing in Carbide Copper.

Is this something that can be addressed? I sent an email to support containing my Gerbers and NC outputs for review.

Thanks,
Chris

7

@Jorge @WillAdams Sorry for the triple bump here, but I figured something out that may help…

I was able to get by (this time) by hacking together a couple of rectangles by using the “Generate Outline Cut” option, which just just takes in length, width, and offset info. At first, the NC file just hard crashed the spindle on my workpiece, like it did before. So, I started examining the G codec, and I found a problem. There’s no command to turn the spindle on.

It seems like the file is missing the M03 command, and its S10000 speed setting. Here is the G code generated for a simple rectangular cutout…

( PCB Cuts )
( Generated by Carbide Copper )
( Material Size )
( X= 152.000, Y= 102.000, Z= 1.580 )
()
G17
G21
G54
G90
G00 X-0.294 Y64.794
G01 F750 Z0
G01 F200 Z-1.580
G01 F200 X-0.294 Y36.706
G01 F200 X22.794 Y36.706
G01 F200 X22.794 Y64.794
G01 F200 X-0.294 Y64.794
G00 Z3.000
G00 Z3.000
M05
M30
%

And here is my edit, to make the spindle turn on, which created a good cut…

( PCB Cuts )
( Generated by Carbide Copper )
( Material Size )
( X= 152.000, Y= 102.000, Z= 1.580 )
()
G17
G21
G54
G90

M03 S10000

G00 X-0.294 Y64.794
G01 F750 Z0
G01 F200 Z-1.580
G01 F200 X-0.294 Y36.706
G01 F200 X22.794 Y36.706
G01 F200 X22.794 Y64.794
G01 F200 X-0.294 Y64.794
G00 Z3.000
G00 Z3.000
M05
M30
%

Nothing else was added, except the line containing “M03 S10000”

Can you please add this spindle on command to the export function of Carbide Copper? This happened when I generated the toolpath as individual steps, into a ZIP file. Not sure if it also occurs if you export a single file for the whole path.

8

This happened when I generated the toolpath as individual steps, into a ZIP file. Not sure if it also occurs if you export a single file for the whole path.

I noticed that a few weeks back when using Carbide Copper for the first time but didn’t have a chance to report it.

Individual files didn’t have a spindle on command and it just slammed into my PCB.

Combined into a single file had a spindle on command as expected.

9

Well, that explains it. I can’t get Carbide Copper to generate my cutout correctly, so my single file only performed the trace cuts and drills, while the “cutout” just performed a single peck drill in mid-air. Then, I had to use the built in simplified rectangular cutout and export a single file for the cutout, when my spindle crashed.

Did your custom cutout work, though?

@Jorge can we please bump these two bugs up in the list? I assume the missing M03 spindle command would be easy to add. The errors with board perimeters may be more complicated, but I sent a few files to support for their review.

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