Gosh, that’s pricey but sure does look like fun.
me want, yet there is a tiny voice in my head telling me that for that money, I could buy more custom boards from a place like Pad 2 print than I could use in a lifetime.
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Well for me, I’d probably use it for intricate jewelry designs or such.
Oh man. I want that. I was all like “it can’t be that much… <scroll> it can’t be that much <scroll> it can’t <reach price> aw damnit!”
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Ohh, this is just a new name for the Othermill. And apparently the company is now owned by Bre Pettis. Which significantly reduces my desire to own one.
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A carvewright would be a better purchase.
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the commercial was ok, but man that looks awesome. still expensive lol
Pretty good machines though. And the price is not all that bad considering it comes with powerful software. Of course there are add on bits and other software that can make it expensive but the initial package is all anyone needs to get started.
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Our local makerspace is merging with the bigger (but newer) one in town and there’s one of those sitting on a table that we believe we know who owns it but she’s not mentioned coming in to pick it up before everything left hits the dumpster tomorrow. If it’s still there tomorrow afternoon, I’m claiming it 
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part of me is still waiting for you to say “and I’ll let you have it”
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…anticipation…
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Inventables sells PCB blanks that can be used with an X-Carve or another 3-axis CNC.
I was going to say you could get and X-Carve for about $1000 but it looks like they stopped selling their smaller machines after Black Friday…still their CNC is half the price of that dedicated machine.
I have two x-carves that I never use. Fixturing for them is a huge PITA and I never quite got isolation milling dialed in. Maybe it’s sensible to try harder before dropping 4K on another machine.
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Fixturing may be harder, honeycomb tray not included, but alignment is way easier than the GF. Still, I’m not familiar with the X-Carve software I have a couple CNC Router Parts machines in my garage they are a dream to work with. As for machining PCBs I’ve found designing the paths in Fusion 360 to be a breeze and it exports directly to my CNC. 
If you are in NC, I know someone that may be willing to buy those off you.
i have a nomad 883 that I used a ton prior to the forge showing up but now only use on rare occasions. It could be used to make simple circuit boards but I have never tried.
Instead, I have used Pad2pad to design and fabricate ~ 5 different designs in various quantities. All of them fairly simple as far as designs go (a few chips, resistors, caps, and connections) but all of them well beyond what would be possible on a mill. 4 layer with ground plane and a ton of vias) . I like to make as many of my parts as possible but this crushes what I could make for myself at a reasonable cost while letting me control the design.
This board is a good recent example.
It is the basis for a clock brain. When stuffed it pulls together an Trinket M0, a rtc chip, a clock crystal, a level shifter , 2 buttons, backup battery, LED connection, power in, 3 test pads, and a few conditioning caps and resistors .
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It’s great that PCB manufacturing has become so cheap and quick. But for me, still, the dream is to be able to make prototypes at home. I could send away to have things laser cut or 3D printed, too.
Particularly as a rank amateur, it takes me a lot of trial and error to get something right. Even a 3-4 day turnaround gets in the way there, especially when I only have evenings and weekends to play around.
Just cutting some acrylic holiday gifts this year has taken me half a dozen tries as I discover things like not fitting properly in the packaging or fine details needing adjustment. I can’t imagine how many PCBs I’ll have to go through. And since I’ll be starting simple, 1 or 2 layers should be fine.
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Thanks for posting this. It made me get off my butt and actually see if I could do this with my X-Carve. I expected to get close but fail, so that I could have an excuse to buy the Bantam mill.
Much to my surprise, I was able to cajole rather good results out of the thing.
So I guess the bad news is there’s no new CNC mill in my future, but the good news is that I’m saving $4,000.
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Missed this last week, but thought you might find this amusing: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/vogonpoetry/lettergen.shtml
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