Amateur Radio Station K6JEB

I finally had time, and (Nitto) awesome double-sided tape to run the G-code for the BLTuner pcb I had written about earlier.

Excellent results! And I was being a total chicken$hit with the feed rate, I could have run it easily at 4 inches per minute.

There were actually two toolpaths: the first was the actual pad isolation and the second was cutting the small board out. I did the first with the 3mm V-bit sold by Zen Toolworks and the profile cut-out with a 1/8 ballnose.

This past Sunday the W6BB Amateur Radio Club picked-up some gear that was kindly donated by the family of the late W6LWX (SK). Here’s a mint WWII era BC-348 receiver. This equipment really underscores the term I like to use instead of ‘boatachors’: HARDWARE DEFINED RADIO (“HDR“). Even after all these years this receiver WORKS GREAT!

video by KJ6DZB

After all, we are QRP DIYers, right?  Pulled the oblique angle image from the instructions into Photoshop and re-created it, hopefully fairly close to scale.  Then I exported the JPEG into Vectric V-Carve Pro to create toolpaths (G-Code) for my CNC.  On the left you see the original and on the right is a preview image of the toolpaths.

A while back, I bought the kit, which had been originally purchased by K6ZAN but after he became a Silent Key, it wound up back in circulation.  The pcb that was with the kit wasn’t etched.  So this is my first time using isolation routing to make a pcb.