PCB Specific CNC: MezzoMill

Other Hardware Hardware Development
1

Tonight at my Hackerspace, a local maker brought in his Kickstarter project. It is called "MezzoMill." It is CNC specific to small PCBs. The intent of the project is making it (nearly) as simple as printing from Eagle. There's no need to change bit sizes more than once and the entire process is automated.

I was really impressed with the ease of use and the results of the board. I thought others might be interested in seeing it as well. I'll probably back the project, just not sure what level yet.

Here's a web page on the CNC which links to the kickstarter project:
http://mezzomill.com/MezzoMill/Home.html

2

Seems like a nice idea. And if it accepted gerber files I'd be tempted. Without that: no way.

3

You can import gerber files into eagle and then export to MezzoMill.

See a discussion of this process here:
http://www.brusselsprout.org/PCB-Routing/

And the tool (eagle_pcb_power_tools5_09beta.exe) is available here:
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/downloads/tools-and-converters/

-David

http://mezzomill.com
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/977338529/mezzomill-carves-circuits-from-cad

4

That is nice too, but who's going to pay for the eagle license - or is that included in the package?

As I do boards larger than 100x160, all the 'cheap' versions of it are quite useless to me.

5

See also http://www.pcbgcode.org/

6

Well, that's less expensive than elektor.com magazine unit, tho not quite as capable.
http://www.elektor.com/projects/pcb-prototyper-(100619).1599728.lynkx

GrumpyMike, how long did it take you to bulild your CNC machine, and what kind of sizes can you get it down to?
(I don't have the link handy)