My first board.

[Cruster]

It took me one year to get to this point which is how long I suffered with the utter turd pile of sh1t which was Colinbus's bug ridden bastard child CPR30PCB/HF Thank god I finally got my money out of them which freed me up to purchase a LPKF.

I'm very pleased with the milling but I managed to completely screw up on cutting out the board so I had to resort to doing it manually which is why it looks so awful.... (I really should do another)

I've now got a backlog of projects to work through and also a lost customer to replace thanks to being unable to produce anything for a year courtesy of Colinbus. They still owe me £400 in shipping which is what it cost me to ship that rancid turd all the way back to Belgium twice.

[fanie]

Looks ok to me. Seems all that remains for us to see if you can actually solder

You got thp there or do you solder both sides ?

Let rip ! Catch the backlog in three days flat

[Cruster]

Thanks! It's a chemical which Lester uses. It tins the board in about 15 seconds.

[Cruster]

Sorry, I skipped your questions about thp - I solder both sides. There's a few holes dotted around which just connect the two ground planes to each other at various places. Bit of tinned wire through the hole soldered both sides.

[dolci]

Hi what model of LPKF you are using?

[Richard]

Looks good, very clean cuts.

Are you using LPKF's own software to do the routing from Gerber ?

Is it something like, do the layout in Eagle, export gerber then import into the software ?

[fanie]

The liquid you're referring to may be arsenic, dissolves silver, if you wipe such a solution on bare copper it tinns it immediately. I still have a bottle of it that has started to crystalize... but no hard coins

THP is an electro chemical process, don't know if it could be worth investigating.

DOL.... DOLCI ! Long gone on holiday eh ! Good grief.

[Bartman]

Originally Posted by fanie

The liquid you're referring to may be arsenic, dissolves silver, if you wipe such a solution on bare copper it tinns it immediately.

Actually, it's a little further up the evolutionary scale
http://www.ormecon.de/welcome.html

[Bartman]

Originally Posted by Cruster

It took me one year to get to this point which is how long I suffered with the utter turd pile of sh1t which was Colinbus's bug ridden bastard child CPR30PCB/HF Thank god I finally got my money out of them which freed me up to purchase a LPKF.[/I].

I sympathise with your trials and tribulations relating to Colinbus.

Similarly, I purchased one of their products, a Profiler, which took for ever to arrive, I could never get it to mechanically function properly due to bent leadscrews and misaligned motors. Despite various emails and postings on the Elektor forum etc I never had any resolution of these fundamental issues.

In the end I purchased a LPKF Protomat S42 which was delivered in two days from Germany and worked flawlessly out of the box.

The LPKF shows up the Colinbus hardware and software products for the utter and total crap that they are.

[DanRiches]

Hey Cruster, pleased you got your hands on an LPKF and that you finally got your cash back. That was ages ago, surely Colinbus aren't still about selling sh1te like that!!!

I hope to get my hands on an LPKF c60 or anything close (made by LPKF of course) sometime soon. I'm very jealous but hope you get on well with it, let us know and also about any other info you get from making pcb's ie thp etc. It's good to have on the forum as a kind of knowledge base.

Dan

[Maverick]

hehe Colinbus are about as popular as a dose of genital herpes
Seems to me the Profiler in elektor was a publicity stunt gone wrong and only seems to advertise their machines flaws.

I myself have the Promat S62 from LPKF and it does exactly what it says on the tin. Unlike my THP line that doesn't never mind new batch of copperacid on it's way.

THP by the way is the next logical step from an LPKF machine, as whats the point of being able to mill TQFP , QFN ect and using huge holes with wires soldered either side. Saying that it's not for the faint of heart. If you have an incedent with your paladium for example and it drops out of solution (not happened to me yet ) thats about £150 worth of chemicals up in smoke (that's only a tiny little bottle of the stuff too ,, 300ml or so)
My experience thus far is that it can all be a bit of a dark art to begin with.

[Cruster]

Originally Posted by Richard

Looks good, very clean cuts.

Are you using LPKF's own software to do the routing from Gerber ?

Is it something like, do the layout in Eagle, export gerber then import into the software ?

Hi Richard, I used Sprint Layout (Lester sells this) to do the board and exported the top & bottom layers as gerber together with the drill file (excellon). This then gets imported into LPKFs "circuit maker" program - which does the isolation milling tool paths and also the board breakout (which I managed to get wrong) this then all goes over to "Boardmaker" which drives the machine. It's all very comprehensive & straightforward to use and it works!!!

There's also a lot of flexibility with the software so you can adjust/fiddle with any settings at any point you like. All complete polar opposite to my ex Colinbus piece of sh1te...

[Cruster]

Originally Posted by dolci

Hi what model of LPKF you are using?

Hi Dolci, its a C60

[Cruster]

Originally Posted by DanRiches

Hey Cruster, pleased you got your hands on an LPKF and that you finally got your cash back. That was ages ago, surely Colinbus aren't still about selling sh1te like that!!!

I hope to get my hands on an LPKF c60 or anything close (made by LPKF of course) sometime soon. I'm very jealous but hope you get on well with it, let us know and also about any other info you get from making pcb's ie thp etc. It's good to have on the forum as a kind of knowledge base.

Dan

Thanks Dan, that's greatly appreciated. I do feel really bad as I was getting increasingly more & more desperate since I was getting absolutely nowhere with Colinbus. Each problem that got discovered just uncovered yet some other further (new) issue with the blasted machine, and from first contact with them to now (over a year) I was unable to produce anything. I think I must have been customer one despite them telling me they had "hundreds" of satisfied users of this (piece of junk) worldwide. Very odd.. since out of the box the software was so bug ridden to be completely unusable and the "manual" for this CPR30PCB/HF frequently referred throughout to the Profiler I contrast that with the concise, thorough & professional documentation which accompanied the LPKF.

I really believe they (Colinbus) were making it all up as we went along and what I bought should never have been made available for sale as it was nowhere near a finished or working product.

I finally got my money back but only through the fortuitous intervention of a certain third party which I think, would have proved embarrassing for Colinbus if they were seen to carry on treating me their customer, badly. Had that not happened, I firmly believe I'd still be stuck with the bloody thing unable to make boards and unable to buy anything else, wondering what on earth to do one year later.

[Cruster]

Originally Posted by Bartman

I sympathise with your trials and tribulations relating to Colinbus.

Similarly, I purchased one of their products, a Profiler, which took for ever to arrive, I could never get it to mechanically function properly due to bent leadscrews and misaligned motors. Despite various emails and postings on the Elektor forum etc I never had any resolution of these fundamental issues.

Money back? but be prepared for one... long... uphill... struggle....

[Maverick]

Your story pangs of typical stupidity and bad business sense on colinbus's part.

I for one don't really understand their approach to customer care

Word of mouth is a powerfull thing. Anyone with a grouping of more than 2 neurons would realise that for every happy customer word of mouth will generate another sale , but for every unhappy customer word of mouth will cost them four sales, this is common business knowledge that you don't need a business degree to grasp. With the advent of the internet this basic rule is compounded 100 fold.

There are 1389 members of this forum from all over the world reading these nightmare stories about their product, now if each of those 1389 told just 4 other people that they have been told that "I sympathise with your trials and tribulations relating to Colinbus.

Similarly, I purchased one of their products, a Profiler, which took for ever to arrive, I could never get it to mechanically function properly due to bent leadscrews and misaligned motors. Despite various emails and postings on the Elektor forum etc I never had any resolution of these fundamental issues.

In the end I purchased a LPKF Protomat S42 which was delivered in two days from Germany and worked flawlessly out of the box.

The LPKF shows up the Colinbus hardware and software products for the utter and total crap that they are." then thats 5556 potential buyers lost right there. Now consider that each of us here (being nerdy tech heads that we are) are members of one other forum with 1000 users and that each of us comment on this on that forum, that's 1389000 potential customers lost world wide !!!!
It doesn't take a quantum physicist to see that bad press can spread like a plague.

Now Cruster correct me if i'm wrong , but I think if the product wasn't what you were expecting but they had thanked you for trying it and offered you a refund immediately and vowed to fix the issues you have had as soon as possible,, you wouldn't be posting quite as bad press , something more like "the profiler didn't work quite as expected but colinbus were very helpfull and refunded my money straight away" This would have made people think ,, 'well at least they are a decent bunch I might wait till the issues are fixed and buy one at a later date anyway'.

My opinion of colinbus has largely been dictated by what I have read here and elsewhere and my decision to go LPKF was largely made, as i too was considering a profiler till I read posts here.

I can't knock the profiler from personal experience , but if anyone asked me I trust the word of people here and would have to say in my opinion that i'd avoid it like the plauge from what I have heard.

[Cruster]

Originally Posted by Maverick

Your story pangs of typical stupidity and bad business sense on colinbus's part.

I for one don't really understand their approach to customer care
.....

Now Cruster correct me if i'm wrong , but I think if the product wasn't what you were expecting but they had thanked you for trying it and offered you a refund immediately and vowed to fix the issues you have had as soon as possible,, you wouldn't be posting quite as bad press , something more like "the profiler didn't work quite as expected but colinbus were very helpfull and refunded my money straight away" This would have made people think ,, 'well at least they are a decent bunch I might wait till the issues are fixed and buy one at a later date anyway'.....

Hi Maverick, I like your maths and yes you're absolutely correct. I too am a member of several other engineering/technical forums and am more than happy to post my own experience of Colinbus and their CPR30PCB/HF machine on those forums should a question ever arise along the lines of "pcb milling machine? which?"

And yes, you're absolutely correct. Had they held their hands up at the very outset and offered me a refund there & then, I wouldn't now be feeling as very aggrieved as I still am with them. In fact, I may even have decided to stick with them? (although at that time I would have been completely unaware of the sheer scale of the problems that beset that machine) so I would have had a very nasty & unwelcome surprise later on...

My attitude to them is further compounded by the fact that I made a 'Gentlemens agreement' with the owner of the company after a very lengthy drawn out argument with him on the phone where, after going around in circles we eventually agreed: That if several software problems weren't fixed by (I think it was ~3 weeks?) then the machine would be returned, he would refund my money and we would draw a line under the matter. Fair enough? What happened? No fix was provided, the problems remained and I duly returned the machine at my own expense. (~£200 including insurance)

He then broke our 'Gentlemens agreement' and thereafter refused to have any further dealings with me instead pointing me to tech support (who I had been talking with all along anyway due to the myriad of problems I was experiencing) That alone was really shocking...

They then had my machine for a period of several months reassuring me that every single issue I had pointed out (about 8 in all, I think?) had now been addressed and the machine was in fact now "perfect".

It was sent back to me and another problem immediately surfaced. The x axis stepper stalling towards the end of its home travel. I've just so really really had enough of Colinbus and am hugely relieved to see the back of them. Now all I have left to do is recoup my £400 shipping fees from them which I think is the very least they could do.

Sorry I've banged on so about this, but as you've probably guessed I still feel very strongly about how shabbily I've been treated by them. The bloody machine never worked from day one. That's a year gone.

[fanie]

A local guy here made himself a tinning machine. It has two rollers of which the bottom roller sits partly in molten solder. A wiper motor turns the rollers once on temperature and all he does is push the pcb into the two rollers. When it comes out the other side the PCB is solder tinned. The silvered PCB's oxidise over time and becomes difficult to solder, while the tinned pcb is much less sensitive to this. There is also enough solder left on the pads for most small SMD components.

I have made a few PCB's that is all SMD, no holes, and I must say they are a lot less frustrating to populate than the TH stuff.

[Bartman]

Originally Posted by fanie

The silvered PCB's oxidise over time and becomes difficult to solder, while the tinned pcb is much less sensitive to this.

This is pretty much an irrelevance with a pcb milling machine as you make your pcb and tin it as and when you need it, and then solder on the components almost immediately, avoiding problems with oxidation of any coatings to the copper layer(s).

[DanRiches]

As regards Fanie's response; it's still quite interesting, especially to those from a hobby background.

One question though; what does everyone use to coat the board ie solder resist (Green crap on top)? I know about the thp process(es) but not the solder resist. And yes Green Crap is a technical term (well in my books), the last time I saw anything close was a touch up pen that smelt weird and really just made everything worse.

Dan

[Cruster]

"Green Crap"

Yup, that would be useful to know. I'm discovering soldering these milled boards requires a certain amount of 'care' - more accurately - 'dexterity' As it's relatively easy to solder adjacent tracking together / blob solder unintentionally where it's not required, especially when stuff is really close together...

Maybe that's what Fanie meant?

Looks ok to me. Seems all that remains for us to see if you can actually solder

Lester was mentioning having some solder resist (the "green crap") recently?

[Maverick]

Actually Dan your wrong , the technical term is 'Green Shite'

This is something I am playing with currently so I can point you in the right directions here.

There are basically 3 types of solder mask (damn used the proper technical term )

1) Screen printed Ink

This involves masking out your pads on a silk screen and silk screen printing the ink to the board ,, forget this as although it's the cheapest method it is also the hardest to achieve and not as accurate as the other 2 methods.

2) Screen printed Photosensitive ink

Now although this is similar to the above it is far easier and more accurate , but the inks cost a little more.

This involves again screen printing the ink onto the board BUT you don't need to mask it !! you cover the entire board (pads and all) with ink ,, dry it and then develop it in much the same way as photoresist (positive artwork).
Where the ink is exposed to the UV it chemically fixes the ink ,, the rest on the pads that don't see UV drops off in the developer.
It's only slightly more complex than photo resist as it requires an oven to dry it out.

read this http://www.megauk.com/screen_print_inst.pdf for full instruction and description.
The screen printing machine is £600 but thats just nadjers , I found fine curtain material stretched on a frame and a squidgee from a cart window cleaner works fine ,, total about £10

This also has the largest selection of colours ,, so you can do blue or black solder resists for example AND you can do Component ident with the same inks (a second layer on top) but using negative artwork instead.

It's negatives are that its sticky messy stuff while it's a liquid before curing and it's hard to get a PERFECT layer on the board with no streaks ect.





3) Photo Imagable Dry Film Transfer

This is a film material you laminate to the PCB with a hot roll laminator and then expose and develop exactly the same as above (same chemicals too).

This is the most expensive option especially if you get a proper dry film laminator (very pricey) but an A4 pocket laminator with a slight heat adjustment works too.

Its the least messy for sure but you are limited to one colour (Boring standard green) so you can't do component indents with it.

look here http://www.megauk.com/dry_film_laminators.php for an idea on prices.





I am NOT advising you which way to go ,, just the options open to you ,, how you approach it is up to you (thats my disclaimer ) for me the OVERALL winner is option 2 ,, it's messy but still cheap and accurate and lets you do fancy coloured boards ect if your not in a hurry.

If time is critical and indent or colour isn't an issue then fess up the cash for option 3 it costs more but will be fast to do in comparison and easier although more expensive per PCB.


hope this helps

[Bartman]

Originally Posted by Cruster

I'm discovering soldering these milled boards requires a certain amount of 'care' - more accurately - 'dexterity' As it's relatively easy to solder adjacent tracking together / blob solder unintentionally where it's not required, especially when stuff is really close together...

Lol...it necessitates the re-awakening of those dormant soldering skills from the distant era before solder resist became de rigeur

[Maverick]

And for fanie

This is exactly what a solder mask prevents to an extent as solder prefers to stick to the copper (or tin) rather than the mask and it insulates the rest of your board from oxidisation and tin whiskers (TIN tends to grow little whiskers over time ,, which can short your tracks ,, honest i'm not making this up ,, solder mask helps prevent this whisker formation) it also stops slow but sure corrosion as eventually because your PCB is copper and electrically charged , the copper will react with moisture in the air to form a mini plating environment where you copper slowly goes green and turns to chlorides and sulphates ,, this though is a long term thing not a big issue with limited life prototypes.

[Cruster]

2) Screen printed Photosensitive ink

Now although this is similar to the above it is far easier and more accurate , but the inks cost a little more.

This involves again screen printing the ink onto the board BUT you don't need to mask it !! you cover the entire board (pads and all) with ink ,, dry it and then develop it in much the same way as photoresist (positive artwork).
Where the ink is exposed to the UV it chemically fixes the ink ,, the rest on the pads that don't see UV drops off in the developer.
It's only slightly more complex than photo resist as it requires an oven to dry it out.

read this http://www.megauk.com/screen_print_inst.pdf for full instruction and description.
The screen printing machine is £600 but thats just nadjers , I found fine curtain material stretched on a frame and a squidgee from a cart window cleaner works fine ,, total about £10

This also has the largest selection of colours ,, so you can do blue or black solder resists for example AND you can do Component ident with the same inks (a second layer on top) but using negative artwork instead.

It's negatives are that its sticky messy stuff while it's a liquid before curing and it's hard to get a PERFECT layer on the board with no streaks ect.

Talking of photosensitive resist ink - you just reminded me - when I saw Lester he was talking about using the machine itself to expose the resist by mounting a uv laser (like you get in cheapo cd/dvd players?) to one side of the head. If I remember rightly, you can set the offset in the LPKF software so the registration could be made to be spot on. Struck me as a very interesting idea!

[Maverick]

Yeah me and lester have nettered about this before as a possibility and indeed you can offset the LPKF for other tools bolted on (easier infact on yours than mine) solder dispensing ect are entirely feasible. In practise though a solder mask is easy to make with your LPKF and a bit of OHP transparency film (works great for me at least) just drill little holes at the pad positions (rather than micro milling squares out) then squeegee your solder cream on top, mount components and bung in the oven ,, jobs a good un.
For the mask normal UV seems to work just fine as it isnt AS critical as the pads themselves, a UV laser bolted to your mill would be uber cool indeed and very accurate BUT have you seen the price of a UV diode laser ?
Me and Lester talked about robbing one from a HDDVD as a cheaper option to play with but even then your talking more than it's worth ,, it's a fun project rather than a practical one currently, BUT that being said the price of UV lasers is only going to fall just like the 532nm greens have and in future this method may well become standard, but Lester is a bit like me ,, he wants to play with it NOW balls to the price

[Cruster]

Originally Posted by Maverick

.... BUT have you seen the price of a UV diode laser ?

Hmm.. I guess it's hideously expensive then? would that be because it's a fairly powerful beastie? How about just compensating, by exposing the resist for a little longer with the (presumably) weedier HDDVD laser? I think there's adjustment available for the duration the head is 'down' when dispensing solder etc., Now, I am quoting from memory here - without really checking the software first so please correct me!

[Maverick]

Well even a HDDVD isn't really cheap £120 quid ish , then you have to strip it down and build a driver, price is really the issue , not power a few milliwatts would do it i think, but as you can get good results with an Elcheapo UV light box , the cost to practicality ration doesn't yet justify doing it. but the diodes will eventually be maybe £20 a pop ,, at that point the added accuracy of the machine for positioning makes it well worth the effort to do it.
I think at the moment it's purely a price per extra performance issue.
The reason HDDVD diodes aren't more expensive is that they are currently fighting for market share by 'loss leading' this is where they actually make a loss of profit on the drives but make it up on the media (movie discs ect) the actual diodes are probably worth more than the drive sells for as a unit.

This is certainly true for the SONY PS3 , they sold it at a huge loss and made it back on the games ,, by doing so anyone considering a blueray player @ £1000 said "sod it I can get a PS3 for £500 and I get a blueray player built in" (this is when they came out) so sony sell more units at a loss but grabs a big chuck of people who would have just bought a player only ,, they then think "sod it i'll get a few games seeing as I have a PS3" and SONY make up the difference on those sales that's loss leading,, a dangerous game the big boys can play ,, of course if it goes titsup they loose a fortune ,, but SONY can afford it

Because of this tho diode production by the likes of nicha goes up so the diode price comes down and the loss gets less (with the added bonus that the diode price comes down for all of us) if sony get the market right they win ,, get it wrong they loose big time.

Swings and roundabouts on a global scale

[fanie]

Gee whiz, you guys talk a lot. The green stuff is actually quite amazing, it is immune to a lot of chemicals and does a great job of protecting tracks. It is usually screened on and baked in an oven to dry. If you get it on pads you'll have troubles soldering. Could work well for waterproofing if you paint it on.

The roller solder tinning works quite well since the boards get solder tinned and the access gets squished off. The guy made me some PCB's once or twice and they worked quite well. I still have some here, whiskerless

[Lester]

To be honest, i dont see the probelm.

We regularly make prototype boards, high density, chris you saw a couple when you visited. Soldering them with NO solder resist is not difficult if you use the correct tools, solder and flux.

we solder under magnification, with an iron equipped with fine bit of the CORRECT temperature and POWER ( heat resevior is as important as temp), we use an acid flux and rely on surface tension to ensure that the whetted solder flows and grabs the tracks. The correct temp, solder and flux will ensure that the solder literally jumps onto the tracks and leaps off the insulation. the odd bridge (if it occures) wil dissapear when reflowed and a small amount of solder removed (soder wick etc).

Solder resist is not required if you use the right tools, in my opinion for prototypes why waste time on solder resist. You design, proto test and prove the design, then move to manufacture using full production process....dont you?


If the boards need to last, or look "pretty green", then OK, but its purely cosmetic.

I reflow in a moving belt oven with NO solder mask, just paste and flux.

Having said all that, look out for the new section on the crownhill web site, within the next 30 days we'll have a section dedicated to supply of tools materials and chemicals for proto and small production run PCB manufacture. Including dry film solder mask.

Well done "Bartman" yes the tinning process is Ormecon, Chris is the first person that i've donated a sample to, I wanted to see his reaction to the results. The tinning solution will be in our new PCB Manufacture section. Along with board cleaning and pre solder solutions that help wetting.

Surface tension and viscosity directly affect the flow characteristics. The higher the surface tension the lower the potential for shorts, but the the less flow, flux reduces surface tension and encourages flow.

For really a nice solder finish, you need a eutectic alloy (With non eutectic alloys a paste-phase develops in the zone between the liquid and solid, have you noticed how some Pb free solders go dull grey and kind of sticky between solid and melting?, thats the phase that you want to be as small as possible)

You also want Surface Tension to be 450 + dynes/cm 500 would be nice.

And a good flux that will reduce that surface tension on the pads so that the solder wetts and flows where you want it.

Mav, Re TIN Wiskers. I dont see the issue with PCBs , I dont think that Tin wiskers will form accross 0.1mm track to track gaps from the tin crystals laid down with the solution that we use. Accross small gaps 10 microns or so, in a mildly humid environment, yes. But on the bench accross 100 micron gaps, i dont think its very likely....could be wrong though :-).

back to worrk............