boylesg
Advanced Member level 4
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2012
- Messages
- 1,023
- Helped
- 5
- Reputation
- 10
- Reaction score
- 6
- Trophy points
- 1,318
- Location
- Epping, Victoria, Australia
- Activity points
- 11,697
What I usually do if I have several holes to drill is drop a screw or pin to hold the boards position. Each time you drill hole s drop a pin or screw to hold it in position.
- - - Updated - - -
I usually drill the first two holes that are furthest apart from each other on the board.
3) Drilling holes and screwing the stand offs into the bottom of the box or a piece of MDF that I then silcone to the bottom of the box. But it is near impossible to get the precision required with a hand drill and the resulting holes never quite line up and cause me no end of trouble.
Yeah I have tried that sort of thing as well but I also find this unreliable because the damn board can still move on you between holes. And you only have to be a 1-2mm out and it still makes it difficult to get the stand offs to line up with the holes in the PCB. And there is VERY little margin for error.
Some one out there must have conceived of a method that does not involve drilling holes that are tightly dependent on each other. Surely!
Hi,
Happens to all of us, more than we'd admit probably. In all honesty, I'm no Olympian with a drill, pretty bad sometimes (only broken 2 0.9mm drill bits in the past 2 years), but a lot of it is practice, like removing the sheath from a cable without cutting into/through the actual wire is an acquired skill with each cable-stripper or knife. And for a drill, using gravity to your favour where possible (i.e. drill downwards to make reliable contact with the spot to drill). I also screw a PCB I am drilling and cutting tracks into onto a 4 cm thick, 40x40 cm martyr board as soon as the first and then the perpendicularly opposite holes are drilled. I mark/gouge the centres of drill holes as best I can with a small Philips screwdriver I filed to a delightful point - it's a really useful tool in several ways (Is that what an awl is, a spike on a handle?). It guides the drill bit during that first worst, slippery moment which is really important for me, drilling or skating on shiny copper...
I'd go with the cardholder style supports, too. I use standoffs a lot though. Sometimes metal and nylon standoffs mean unsightly metal or nylon screw heads or bolts visible on one external side of the box - it looks a bit you know what and Frankensteiny for my liking.
I don't find that putting the drill through drilled pcb holes is so detrimental if you're quick, so maybe just using the pcb as the template for the enclosure and as a guide for the drill bit, as suggested above too, is the simplest and quickest way of precision drilling.
Have a look in a dollar shop for those rubber feet/circles/dome shapes to stick under stereos and everything else electrical you have. They come in all shapes and sizes, are so cheap, and could with good glue be a suitable solution (and they're so easy to drill and you needn't be so accurate as they are usually rubbery and give a lot of play room). You could even get ~1 cm diameter ones and scoop/drill out a seat/platform for the standoffs, for a snug fit with friction pressure to hold them in place and take in and out without screws or glue on the pcb itself.
Hi,
It's just practice and patience until you drill more accurately.
If the mountain won't come..., as they say: Make the pcb drill holes 1 - 2 mm wider to give room to move and fit the headers - and to preempt you, don't tell me you've tried that and it doesn't work because it's standard practice for drilling and lining up tiny and huge things.
An Arduino is not a PCB so there you can only depend on improving your drilling skills to fit the tolerances you'll have to play with.
You'll just have to practice drilling accurately on spare pieces of PCB instead of getting in a state about it. What can't be cured must be endured.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?