Building a Simple Circuit with the Othermill

The Othermill is a nifty little desktop mill that can fabricate amazing things out a variety of goods. Printed circuit boards for electronics are something it handles nicely. Here's a tutorial for a basic board to play with. It's the first public project we released for the Othermill.

Step 1: Assemble Your Materials and Equipment

Equipment:

• An Othermill
• A soldering iron and solder
• Diagonal cutters
• Calipers to measure your board (Calipers are available at most hardware stores, are easy to use, and can range in price from inexpensive to absolutely shocking. They are useful for very tiny, accurate measurements, more so than a ruler or by eyeball.)
• “Third set of hands” (optional)
• Safety glasses

Materials:

• 1 - single-sided FR1 printed circuit board blank
• 2 - 47 Ohm resistors
• 2 - LEDs (we used 3mm red and green ones)
• 1 - Coin-cell battery (we used a trusty 3V CR 2032)
• 1 - Coin cell battery holder (we made sure ours fit our trusty 3V CR 2032)
• Double sided sticky tape

Skills Required:

• A basic understanding of how a simple electrical circuit works.
• Basic soldering.
• A basic understanding of what milling is.

OR

• The willingness to pick these skills up while you make this project (it might take a little longer, but if you've never done it before, you'll feel like you just invented fire).

Step 2: Set Up Your Othermill: Getting Started

Know how to get the machine set up for milling, and how to download and install Otherplan, the Othermill motion control software.

Turn on your Othermill and home the machine when you are prompted.

Step 3: Set Up Your Material

Launch Otherplan, and click on the "Setup Material..." button in the "Setup" panel.

Use the calipers to measure the exact height, width, and depth of your FR-1 blank.

Select "Custom Width," and add in the X, Y and Z dimensions of your PCB. Click "Continue..." and "Done."