Pen Holder

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Pen Holder

Release status: Experimental

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This Pen Holder can be used to draw circuit boards with an etch resistant pen and is printable on a RepRap. Besides the RP parts all that is needed to operate it is a rubber band which holds the pen in place.

The CAD Models can be downloaded from Thingiverse

Video

<videoflash type="vimeo">13521005|640|480</videoflash>


Pens

Pigment ink type

This pens have a pigment ink that should resist to etch acid. People are printing PCBs with Epson printers which have his DureBrite pigment ink that resists to etch acid.

Here a list of pigment ink pens:

Workflow:

  • plot the design on PCB;
  • put PCB on oven for a few minutes to dry the ink very well;
  • etch the PCB.

Gerber RS274X to GCoder Converter

A little Java program to convert Gerber RS274X files, which can be exported from Eagle or KiCad, to GCode.

The code can be downloaded via subversion:

$ svn co http://ionscale.com/svn/repos/reprap/gerber2gcode
$ cd gerber2gcode/src
$ javac Main.java 
$ java Main pcb.gerber pcb.gcode
Gerber RS274X to GCoder Converter for RepRap's

Input: pcb.gerber
Output: pcb.gcode

Pen Width: 0.7 mm
Offset X: 40.0 mm
Offset Y: 40.0 mm
Drawing Height: 1.8 mm
Freemove Height: 3.8 mm

GCode file generated succesfully !

This software is still in a very early stage. The pen width, offset and height parameter can be changed at the top region of the Main.java file.