Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

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Since this is the DIY forum

Posted by Mark Kelly (M) on October 17, 2005 at 16:55:41

In Reply to: Re: Anybody set up to do decent quality single-sided circuit boards? posted by Steve Eddy on October 17, 2005 at 16:29:15:

You can make your own eyelet tool out of a piece of hard steel the right diameter , such as a drill shank. If you use one of the twist drills designed to mount in a standard 1/4" power driver this becomes easily changeable too. A good tool for cutting the flare is the 1/8" carbide cutter that goes on a dremel - they are about $AUD15 here so I guess they are less than $USD10.

Use a drill bit the same diameter as the outer diameter of the eyelet to be pressed. Cut the fluted part of the drill off with a cutoff wheel. Mount the shank in a drill press or other slow drill chuck and have it rotating at the lowest speed you can. Take the dremel with the 1/8" carbide tip rotating at full speed and hold it so it is at right angles to the drill shank. Gently take the dremel in to the shank about 6 mm up from the cut end so that it cuts a rounded groove. If you want a large groove width simply angle the dremel across the shank slightly - you end up with a hyperbolic curve this way but in practice it seems to work just as well.

Keep cutting until the diameter at the bottom of the groove is the inside diameter of the eyelet to be flared. Do this slowly in multiple passes so as not to get the shank too hot or it will lose its hardness. Once the groove is formed, take the cutoff wheel and cut though the shank a bit more than half way across the groove so that what is left is the top half of the groove cut. Bevel off this cut edge (the carbide tool will do this) and you have an eyelet flare for next to nix.

More is learnt from one bold error than from a hundred craven equivocations - Daniel Dennett

Mark Kelly

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