Hi, I am tired of routing out square holes in PCB's using a drill press, there must be a better way. I am thinking of some kind of punch system, does this exist for use on PCB materials ? Are they super expensive ? I use square holes in the pcb's as some components require them for mounting. Either i will find something to cut square holes, or im going to change parts to something that doesnt need it. Way too time consuming with a drill. Alex.
I suspect your holes are small. There's a company called Whitney-Jensen that makes some nice metal punches. I have both the No. 5 Jr. and the XX punch. I have seen rectangular tooling for the XX punch, and own a few shapes for my tool, but I suspect the punch and die pairs are fairly expensive (I garnered my tooling through years of flea-marketing, so I can't say precisely how expensive). In Greenlee punches, there are a couple of square shapes like 3/4" x 3/4" or 5/8" x 5/8" but they have grown frightfully expensive (for a hobbyist, that is). I have at least one of them, bought when they were reasonable, maybe 40 years ago. I recently needed a rectangular hole for a slide switch mounted in 0.040" copper sheet. I found an old spiral scroll saw worked very well, only requiring I drill four #60 corner holes and do a little filing after the sawing. Also there's the Adel Nibbler to help with larger holes. Good luck. Chuck
