Square holes

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.

 

normally you drill the hole as a gide then use something like a
greenlee punch.

 

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