Anycubic Duet Wifi I3 Mega UV laser pcb etching and soldermask workflow

First steps with my modded Anycubic I3 Mega 3D printer exposing, etching and soldermasking my pcb.

This is no proper solder mask, it is an ordinary Kapton tape which my cheap 500mW UV Laser (405nm) can cut (at PWM 160) in two passes.

Results were quite good but there is a lot of vibration comming from the axes, need to investigate further, may detach the whole printhead and attach the laser module alone to remove mass. But there is a lot of vibration on the Y-axis which is not affected by the laser mass, its the bed that seems to vibrate, maybe tighten belt…

Because of the vibration I would not go lower traces than 8mil. Also my Kapton tape seem to have quite a thickness, should maybe tray thinner stuff.

Currently struggling with best settings in Flatcam and my laser beam width which seems to fluctuate between 0.11mm and 0.15mm between lasering jobs.

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