JoyPCB

How to make professional quality PCB at home in an hour?

It has been a long challenge for DIY makers community to make a fine double-sided PCB at home in an hour.

Thanks to popular Eagle CAD, drawing schematic and layout of PCB is just piece of cake. The charming software makes it easy for DIY makers to share their drawing with others.

However, the DIY PCB making is still slow and tedious due to its complex nature of PCB construction process.

One way to tackle this problem is to use CNC PCB drill that drill fine holes as well as cut the PCB board precisely. But the machine asks you G-code list that you must create.

G-code is a kind of programming language you need to know to control CNC machine.

After you draw schematic and layout of PCB, the Eagle CAD generate Gerber file that is an industrial standard file format used by professional PCB companies.

The CNC PCB drill machine can’t interpret the Gerber file so you must convert the Gerber file to G-code list.

How?

Well, the conversion is a complex process that you can’t do it by yourself.

Here comes our JoyPCB software made for DIY PCB makers.

The software automatically does whole conversion process in seconds. All you have to do is just open your Gerber file and press a button.

The first screen you see when EagleDriller is executed.

Open a Gerber file you have drawn. Then it converts the Gerber to G-code instantly.

This snapshot is G-code view of your PCB board. Little squares represent drilled holes. The enclosing rectangle is the PCB board boundary that is to be cut by CNC drilling machine.

When you press ‘view raw PCB’ tab, a layout of PCB appears. This is a graphical screen of the original Gerber file. This file is converted to  G-code.

Press drilling tab. Then you can see the list of G-code files. Left-most list is the original Gerber file while others are G-code files of drilling parts. Three drilling tools (0.6mm, 0.8mm, 1mm drill bits) are used. Each of three lists corresponds one of those tools.

Some PCB has milled shape. Imaging a PCB with a big circular hole in the middle. The hole must be milled by endmill tool.  This G-code is for the milling part of CNC drilling machine.

Check the folder you saved your Gerber files. You are able to notice five   .nc files are created.

Each .nc file contains G-code of corresponding tool as this tables

Xxxx_06.nc	G-code for 0.6mm drill
Xxxx_08.nc	G-code for 0.8mm drill
Xxxx_10.nc	G-code for 1.0mm drill
Xxxx_mill.nc	G-code for milling using 1.0mm endmill tool
Xxxx_outline.nc	G-code for milling outline of PCB using 1.0mm endmill tool

Generating Gerber file from Eagle CAD

When you press G-code menu, you can choose 0.6mm,0.8mm, 1.0 mm tool.

Then you can see G-code of each tool. This view clearly shows G-code of each tool.

After you’ve done your PCB layout drawing, Press ‘CAM tool’ button as shown above.

Then, press Job menu on File submenu.

Select joypcb.cam

It’s almost done. All you have to do is just press ‘Process Job’ button.

Cutting PCB

It’s time to cut PCB using a low cost CNC router.

Prepare 0.6mm, 0.8mm drill bits as well as a 1.0mm endmill bit.

Make a laptop computer with Windows XP OS (must be XP OS. Other OS do not work) that has a parallel port like following photo.

Install Mach3 CNC software(http://www.machsupport.com/)

Connect CNC controller and PC’s parallel port with a printer cable.

참고:
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ㅡMill, Outline, Drill are important. Mill=HPGL, .MIL file, 46 milling layer, Outline=HPGL,.Outline file, 20 dimension layer, DRD=Excellon, .DRD file,  44 45 drills and holes layer

-The width of dimension must be 1 (note the default width is 20 mil. change to 1)