Making PCBs with 3D printer

I always wanted to make PCBs at home. I have tried most of the processes from the internet to make PCB-s (by hand with marker, with printer and glossy paper, ....). Recently I got 3D printer and thought that the precision should be enough to make simple PCBs with it. So I searched from internet and found this page: http://www.lamja.com/?p=635

I had some old rod from an old printer from scrap. Next I designed a rod holder that would fit the printer. The printer is modified Ender 3 and has new cooling. So the rod holder had to be designed from scratch. I found some usable size spring that I made a bit bigger.

I tried the process with marker and it worked but the result was not very good. So I had a idea to use nail polish and scrape that off with the rod. I used some random old nail polish.

This resulted much better PCB board than the marker.

Other parts of the process are the same as the link above. I had some trouble to get the *.svg file to FlatCam, because FlatCam's svg support is not good.

So I got it to work by using Inkscape and saved my svg file to pdf. Then I used reaConverter to convert pdf to gbr. Then I got gbr file to FlatCam. The conversion made quality a bit worse but for these pcb-s it doesn't matter.

At start my fear with nail polish was that it would come off as flakes. That was not true, the nail polish is coming off nicely where it should.

Tips:

• Do not set the scraper to scape too hard, otherwise the mount bends and results not precise pcb.
• I tried different tool diameters but still came back to similar as tutorial 0,20..0,25mm
• Rod has to move freely in the sleeve.
• I also tried spray paint that worked well. Spray's layer is much better than nail polish