PCB holder 2

 As promised this is update to last post about our PCB holders.

Technical difficulties

It turns out that if I want tapped hole every 10mm that's a lot of tapping. Additionally tapping steel is quite hard, especially with such small tap. Most companies decided that they don't want to do such job, one that agreed is research institution so I guess they're used to nontrivial requirements. After some negotiations we got price of almost 5k euro for 300x300mm sheet. That's a bit too much for this project.

Required changes

My changing steel to aluminum and moving holes onto 15x15 grid we considerably reduced required engineering time. After initial testing it turned out that 15x15 hole spacing is more than sufficient, but swapping to aluminum means magnetic mounts are no longer an option. I guess it's low price to pay to reduce manufacturing cost to 740 euros.

plates when they first arrived in our lab


 

Designed mounts

We designed few mounts for plates to mount things on them. The more critical parts will me milled or turned from metal, the less strained ones will be 3d printed to further reduce cost. Here is gallery of mounts we made:

aluminum clamps fresh from factory

metal feet for now with 3d printed clamps


test plastic mounts screwed

Few photos of complete setup

pulse laser driver mounted for testing

measurement setup built with plates for cancer research

 


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