CNC board and USB microscope

While in China I picked up a USB microscope for $25 USD. It’s an “2MP HD microscope with 600x magnification” according to the box and has 6 LEDs around the camera. I plugged it in and it was found right away by Linux as a video4linux device and works with VLC and Cheese. It’s been sitting next to my computer for about 2 weeks since I got back from China and I’ve been itching for some reason to use it. Tonight I made a small board on my CNC to test some new footprints and I thought it would be the perfect time to use the microscope to check out the cuts made by the bit. Using Cheese I was able to get some good shots of the PCB traces. The pictures are only 640×480, so I’m not too sure where the 2MP claim comes from.

I used my gcode_03 ULP script for Eagle (from my older site) to export the PCB to G-code. When I started working with the CNC for PCB routing I was using a 0.8mm end mill carbide bit, however I’ve noticed I get pretty clean cuts with a 30 degree “V” etching bit run at the max speed of my manually controlled spindle (Yes I know I need to find out the RPMs of that thing). The cuts made by the CNC are impressively clean and without burs. Each cut goes down 0.16 inches and the feed rate is 300mm/minute. The footprint is SOIC-8, the pads are 1.27mm x 0.635mm and the traces are 20mil. The cut is close to 0.5mm. The microscope did show what looks like copper particles in the track which was interesting to see. I’ve made a bunch of breakout boards and switch boards without shorting issues so I don’t know if these particles are big enough to cause a problem. Here are some pictures of the board using the microscope.