Advantages
PCB milling has advantages for both prototyping and also for some specialist PCB designs.
Prototyping can provide a fast-turnaround board production process without the need for wet processing. If a CNC mill is already used for drilling, this single machine can carry out both parts of the process.
Some PCBs, requiring extensive drilling or profiling of the board outline are particularly suitable for production by milling. Where the tracks must precisely follow the board shape, using the same CNC mill for both reduces registration and scaling errors. Many boards that are simple for milling would be almost impossible by wet etching and manual drilling afterwards.
In mass production, milling is unlikely to replace etching although the use of CNC is already standard practice for drilling the boards.
Read more about this topic: Printed Circuit Board Milling
Famous quotes containing the word advantages:
“Men hear gladly of the power of blood or race. Every body likes to know that his advantages cannot be attributed to air, soil, sea, or to local wealth, as mines and quarries, nor to laws and traditions, nor to fortune, but to superior brain, as it makes the praise more personal to him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In 1845 he built himself a small framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native and fit for him. No one who knew him would tax him with affectation. He was more unlike his neighbors in his thought than in his action. As soon as he had exhausted himself that advantages of his solitude, he abandoned it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)