Below I would like to show you how to use a 3D printer as a plotter and use it to make a very high quality PCB. The description will not be comprehensive, but I hope it will be detailed enough.
First, about the printer accessories. You need a good quality, non-slip linear bearing, as well as a carbide stylus. Since these can be of many types, the way they are attached to the printer is also varied. A support structure must be made in which a spring presses the stylus downwards. The stylus is about 1.5 mm lower than the printer nozzle, so when leveling before starting to draw, you need to tap the machine to level it 2mm higher.
It is not necessary for the glass sheet, but the double-sided adhesive sticks better to it and if something goes wrong during leveling, the machine will not scratch the PEI sheet.
The prepared PCB needs to be painted and left to dry. I determined its exact position on the build table by testing it several times, so that the stylus did not reach it, but moved 1 mm higher.
Nothing special so far...
But now comes the question of how to make the designed circuit into a graphic that can be drawn... I use the Kicad program for circuit design. First of all, because it is free, and secondly, because it is very easy to create new or special footprints in it. It is important that the completed PCB drawing is plotted in DXF format and saved from the File menu. Here you need to make sure that the desired layer is selected. Unfortunately, mirrored plotting does not work, if necessary, this will have to be done later.
Okay so far, but how do you turn a 2D drawing into a 3D model that the printer (slicing program) can handle? For example, with Fusion360... because it's free for home use, very easy to use, and has lots of tutorial videos. So we insert our completed DXF format drawing into a Fusion360 sketch and make a 3D model out of it.
So, we start Fusion360, click the Create Sketch button, and select a plane of our drawing sheet. Then, click the Insert tab and select the Insert DXF option. Then, we select the plane of our drawing sheet and import the previously saved DXF file. Here, it is worth paying attention to the consistency of the units of measurement... ;) If we did everything right, our drawing will appear.
Well, we have the drawing, making a model from it is really easy... We clicked on the Finish Sketch button, then on the Extrude button. We need to set the extrusion distance, which should ideally be 0.2mm. Then we need to select all areas on our drawing where the stylus will scrape the paint. So everything that is not the circuit drawing! Including the centers of the through holes, but not the PADs. It is easy to make mistakes here, let's be careful! If we did everything right, then we will now see the PCB in inverse 3D, where the conductor tracks are indicated by trenches. The 3D printer will draw around these trenches.
Then we can save our finished model by clicking on File and then Save, or we can also send it to the slicing program by selecting the 3D Print option. Note that Fusion only sends the selected objects, so make sure everything is selected. It is best to click on the Bodies folder on the left.
Our printer is ready, the model is ready, now there are only a few settings left in the slicing program. No need to think about big things... No need for any heating, no need for filament. However, the line thickness is only about 0.05 mm. The Z lift should be set high enough so that it does not touch the PCB surface during travel. Shading is not necessary if the number of wall lines is high enough, but this is a matter of personal preference...
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