You can make your own printed circuit board in a number of different ways.
You can use chemicals.
Or you can have your board professionally made at a fabrication house
Or you can use one of these - a milling machine.
As always, you'll need to start with a design for your board.
The Othermill accepts most common PCB design file formats.
I’m using EAGLE CAD software here which exports in .brd format.
But this time - instead of my own design, I'll be using this capacitive synth layout
from the Othermachine company because ... I want to play it.
The capacitive synth only has one layer of traces, so we can use a single-sided copper
clad board.
If we were milling a double sided board we could employ an bracket to make sure both
sides line up properly.
But we’re keeping things simple - so we’ll just use some double-sided tape to keep the
board stable during milling.
Make sure it's squared up with the mounting plate and press it down nice and secure before
getting started.
The othermill software is pretty straightforward.
open up the board file for our project - and specify the endmill size we'll be using.
This design can be cut using 1/32 inch and 1/64 inch endmills.
We'll start with the smaller of the two - which will only be used for the holes and a few
tight corners.
After the mill goes through a quick calibration process ... we can begin cutting copper.
Once the mill is done using the 1/64 inch endmill, it will automatically pause and prompt
me to install the 1/32 inch.
Since this is a relatively large board, the entire process takes a little under 2 hours
to complete.
But after that our board is good to go and ready to solder.
Pleasingly glitchable, capacitively touchable - I like it.
Keep in mind - you can make more than just electronics with this thing.
You can also make ... cat pins.
… credits.