CNC PCB PLOTTER

About the Team.

I'm Abel Mathews, the founder of Builderduino. Builderduino is our small science lab near our home. We are doing projects and Expirements in our lab. We encourage electronics and robotics project makers, students etc. We launched a website on previous day. The inside image of our lab is given below.

CNC PCB Plotter.

CNC Machines means Computerized Numerical Control Machines which are used to draw anything or design any mechanical part according to the design program fed into their controller unit. CNC machines have stepper and servo motors to draw the design as per the fed program.There are so many CNC machines in the world they are CNC Laser cutting machine, CNC winding machine , CNC plasma cutting machine….etc. CNC machines are mostly used in automotive industries. Using this idea I’m making a CNC Writing Machine. It is also known as CNC Plotter. CNC Writing Machine is a device which helps to write assignments with attractive fonts, draw pictures cartoons etc.

What is the main use of this device? Why we decided to make this project?

The main use of this device is drawing the layout of Copper Clad board. Copper clad board is a board which is used to make Printed Circuit Board [PCB]. Printed Circuit Board is used in our home appliances such as, mobile phone, television, mixie and so on. In our country we don’t have low cost PCB manufacturing company. The students those who do Electronics and Robotics projects including me also buying from “PCBWay” or “JLCPCB” in china. These are two companies who manufacture PCB. They offer just 5USD [400INR] for 10 PCB’s.

Before China-India clash they provide free shipping. After the clash they didn’t provide free shipping and 17USD [1360INR] for shipping. So I used copper clad board for making PCB for my projects. In my previous projects, I used permanent marker and ruler scale for drawing layout in PCB. It takes so many times. For this reason I decided to make a CNC Plotter for printing the layout of PCB.

Working Explanation..

I’m using 14v lithium ion battery for power supply. If I turned ‘ON’ the switch the 14 v reaches to the 7805-voltage regulator ic. Then the 14v reduce into 5v. Then the 5v reaches to the stepper motors, servo motor, stepper motor drivers and 3.3v zener diode. Then the 3.3v zener diode reduce the 5v into 3.3v and reaches to the microcontroller. The Raspberry Pi Pico will turned ‘ON’ and the cooling system also tuned on. Then we can connect the microcontroller into PC or laptop using a chord wire. Then turn on the PC and open Arduino IDE and program the micro controller and upload the code. After that create a PCB layout and download it. And convert the layout into G-code using GRBL software. After that download the G-CODE sender and Install it. Then we want to import the layout file and print it.

Components for this project.

 Raspberry pi pico [1pcs]

 ULN2003 Motor Driver IC [2pcs]

 28BYJ-48 Stepper Motor [2pcs]

 Cooling fan 5v [2pcs]

 FR4 Copper clad PCB 15x10cm [1pcs]

 Ferrous chloride for PCB etching [1pcs]

 3.7v Lithium ion battery [4pcs]

 4cell Lithium battery holder [1pcs]

 16pin Dip ic socket [2pcs]

 40pin Female header straight [2pcs]

 40pin Male header straight pin [2pcs]