Hello all, I’m working on making my first home made PCB just for the fun of saying I did it myself and I’m looking for help with a question I haven’t been able to find answers to in the forum or by way of Google.
Can a Cricut brand vinyl cutting machine be effectively used to make a stencil for masking off traces in order to etch the unnecessary copper off the PCB board? If so what file format needs to be exported to do so?
I haven’t researched the topic but this is the only one I came across watching Elec YT channels.
I’ve also seen Coke cans cut open and have holes etched in them for stencils.
I guess it depends on the thickness of the vinyl because it dictates how much paste gets put down.
I was working on it over the weekend and was able to make both a positive and negative image (at the same time) of the PCB layout I’m considering etching on a copper clad FRP board.
One has the trace pattern left in vinyl to be transferred to the copper board. The other has the opening like the SMD stencil shown in the video which will require filling in with ink marker or some other suitable masking agent to protect the copper.
I also have the vinyl backing paper I’m going to try and use with a laser printer to attempt the toner transfer method with an iron just for comparison of the results.
Hi!
I use Silhouette Cameo 3, it’s awesome, but you should search for some vinyl cutting machine reviews and you will decide which one cutting machine the bet for you and your business.
To try to paint my Gram’s soup recipe on a chalk board, I used the Cricut brand stencil. It proved bad. This is mainly because of the intricacy of the recipe/handwriting, I assume. It took about 4 hours for the recipe to clean up in the design room. The stencil had to be cut 2-3 times. Then it took an hour or two to weed it. I was then unable to move the recipe to the chalk board without pulling the stencil back up on the transfer tape. The loss of a lot of my time is really sad. lol. Next, I’m going to try to clean up the Inkscape recipe. I’m assured that this should help make the cuts less ‘nodular’ and thus easier to cut for the Cricut (i.e. it doesn’t take 2-3 hours to cut) and therefore make it more effective to pass the stencil to my content. I assume. Hope I do. I can see why some of these sites charge $200 for doing what I’m trying to do… lolol.
Hey, I’ve been choosing between Cameo 3 and Cameo 4. What can you say about your? Here I’ve read that Cameo 4 is noisy and for me, that’s a real drawback, how about the one you use?