Post

Stephen Hawes
@stephenhawes.com

just got my hands on a fiber laser! with some tuning i think this thing could be an incredible tool for quickly prototyping pcbs.

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Timon
@timonsku.zip

The thing is you are always going to need to drill (unless your laser is *really* powerful) which is why I always ended up with a CNC workflow. With the right CNC its actually very straight forward, the thing that sucks most is the software which only Bantam sorta solved with Makera catching up slow

Stephen Hawes
@stephenhawes.com

this is exactly how i felt about milling, bantam did the best so far but they stopped making the small mill and IIRC gerber processing is gated behind a subscription. glad to hear makera is working towards it!

Timon
@timonsku.zip

I had good luck with CopperCAM but its def. a bit clunky to setup. Makera has their CAM software in beta now which supports Gerber processing but had no chance to try it yet. The machine itself is infinitely less work than the Othermill to setup, even with worse CAM its faster turn around.

Barbatronic
@barbatronic.bsky.social

Great! I'll follow this with interest! Most of the time, I see people only doing engraving, but I've always wondered if drilling and cutting were possible, especially with FR1 (FR4 seems problematic in this case). I think my robotics students would love to have this type of machine on my floor! :D