[Systems Engineering Teachers' Mailing List] PCB router

[Neville YOUNG]

Hi Everyone,
My school also has a T-Tech circuit board milling machine and it does work really well. However, it is really suited to one off PCB designs. I used it for a while doing class sets of my students PCB's that they designed for their projects. Every PCB was different. It meant that I was doing a lot of the prep work collecting files and putting them into another larger file for the machine to use and it then took quite a while to complete the routing of a 18 x12 inch board. When you compare the time preparing and organising the students files and then making the PCB, using an etching tank is much faster and less demanding of the teachers time.
 
 I would suggest that you look at one of the machines from Carba-Tec that they carry. They have 2 versions of the CNC Shark. They are both above your budget at just under $5 and $6K. They both come with VCarve pro (the same software that comes with the Roland CNC). When I enquired some time ago about the PCB software that came with the Roland, it only drilled the component holes and didn't rout the tracks, but this may have changed. 
 
We also have the large Roland machine and it has been of much greater use than the T-Tech machine. If it was me I would see about trying to increase the budget and buy the bigger of the Carba-Tec machines and concentrate on cutting out parts for student projects, it's amazing what ideas the students can put the CNC machine to use on .
 
Neville Young

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From: syseng-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of Alexandre Roujnikov
Sent: Thu 30/08/2012 8:23 AM
To: Systems and Engineering Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Systems Engineering Teachers' Mailing List] PCB router



Dear colleagues

I teach SE at Penola Catholic College and I have around $2-3K to spend on PCB computerised router and I am asking for your advice.

What sort of router and from whom/where can I buy for such modest budget?
Ebay is full of different offers for type of routers but which one and what are cons?

Please advise by return email.

Regards, Alex Roujnikov.

P.S. Roland's product is robust, versatile but too expensive.

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