This is a four axis (= two z-axis for different drill/mill tools) CNC mill. The copper board is mounted on to a platform that can move in two directions (x-axis and y-axis). This allows the machine to position a drill very precisely. Either of the two z-axes can then be used to move a drill/mill down and carve away material. There are two z-axis so that the machine can do hole drilling and groove carving in one go by sliding the whole platform from the mill to the drill. Manually switching tools would have been an option to save building one z-axis, but this would also mean building a system to recalibrate the drill-length for every tool switch.
Nice work.
Looking at the blog I see you are trying to mill round a conventional track shape. There is a better way and that is to use Voronoi Tesselation, google it. I haven't done much work with the technique myself but it looks promising to produce a milled PCB.
I tend to use the same technique only "by hand". That is I design the PCB like that in the first place.
Heya - Stijn Kuipers here - I just saw on my facebook that my article got posted here.
I've done a bunch of voronoi experiments too (including more organic looking autorouting, articles on that will follow later) but for the circuits I needed to cut it made very little difference -> I use a lot of 0.5mm pitch tqfp IC's, and the drill will just not be accurate enough for this unless I build a more solid mill from something not-makeblock. (or use so many custom parts it can barely be called makeblock anymore)
I've since upgraded my etching setup to produce boards usable enough to solder, but as I said in the article - it is very hard to justify when the PCB proto houses are so cheap.. Pro boards will last way longer.
