A must if your making your own PCB projects, Or if you need to make a proto board before ordering a run of PCB's.

Drilling PCB's is an important but time consuming process - The better the job you do, The better the end result of the PCB.

I found when drilling Machine pin sockets or Pin arrays, Slight miss alignment of drill holes would result in poor fitting components.

After building the USB Microscope Mini Drill Press - Pin arrays align perfectly and satisfaction is happily achieved.

After ruining a perfectly etched project PCB with bad drilling, I was determined to build a decent drilling station.

There were a few projects of this nature, But I was not happy with the way they mounted the cam in reference to the drill point.

They seemed to be vulnerable to slight movement of the target in reference to the cam mount.

I needed a better design and I wanted it simple - Because simple is often best.

My idea was to simply mount the camera on a piece of sturdy right angle aluminium.

And this assembly is simply bolted underneath the drill press platform via the clamp holes.

Design limitations: The bolts do interfere with PCB positioning, For small or thin PCB's this is not a problem.

Ideally the bolts would screw into threaded holes on the underside of the drill press platform.

Initial alignment is achieved

For horizontal axis by swinging the drill press head left or right.

For vertical axis by sliding the cam mounting block forward or back.

(The aluminium right angle has horizontal slots to slide the mount back & forth)

Calibration is achieved by drilling a piece of test PCB and centering the target overlay on the drill hole.

Thats all you need to know to be able to build yourself a sub millimeter accurate drilling press.

I hope you enjoyed this project and are encouraged to build your own USB Microscope drill press.