Other PCB design packages are Eagle (industry standard/leader, but expensive and complex to use), Altium (commercial orientated but I've no experience), KiCAD (free/opensource, but I found it a bit clunky/not user friendly and kinda limited), or if you want real basic you could use DesignSpark (used it years ago, so not sure how much it's improved since). Have a look over on the EEVblog forum (EEVblog Electronics Community Forum - Index ()) as they have a PCB section with some good threads on PCB creation. I personally get all my PCBs made by Seeedstudio in China, as it's very cost effective, although the delivery time may be an issue. Although the last batch I ordered took under 2 weeks.My first post here, and I'm new to both CNC and milling PCBs. So I'm trying to do things as cheaply as possible until I get the hang of it.Īnd by new, I mean I had never even powered up a mill or milled anythingbefore three weeks ago and I'm still only self-taught. This means avoiding commercial software where possible, or anything that's tied to a specific PCB manufacturer. I used to make PCBs with photoresist and a double sided UV case, but for the times I make PCBs, it's a pain to mix chemicals up in the required quantities for a single PCB and then dispose of it all. I had a 6040 mill gathering dust in the shed ( had problems with the parallel port and shelved it for a decade ) so I pulled it out, fixed it up and added a USB breakout to work with Windows 10. So after looking around and trying different things, I put together a basic setup involving But it's been challenging even finding free software to cover every part of the process. It's the only free PCB software I've been able to find that outputs Gerber. This is surprisingly good, is free to use. This also works remarkably well, and puts out Mach3 format gcode. I'm using 0.1mm 10degree engraving bits, which make a mess, but it's easily cleaned up with a quick polish after engraving, and I'm getting sub 10-thou cuts with a new bit and even worn bits seem OK.Ĭurrently, I'm missing some easy options. One example is a simple way of cutting the PCB since I can't edit the gcode ( and haven't worked out if FlatCAM can edit it ) and flatcam treats the outline as a path and tries to mill both sides which is a problem.
At best, I get around this by manually editing the gcode.Īnyway, this brings the newbie question. Is there are other free software packages I should be looking at that others have tried and can recommend? It's all working, but it could work better.
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