PCB Land Cutters - For Dead Bug / Manhattan Style PCB Projects

Recently I have been intrigued by the Manhattan Style of PCB construction. I noticed a lot of Hams are using the "MePads" from QRPme. The look like an excellent product and someday I'm going to buy some.

At the moment I'm being a bit more thrifty. One day I happened to stumble upon one of Andy Davies' excellent videos which was entitled Circuit board 'Land' cutter. Andy presents the idea of using a "Rolled Pin" in a drill press to cut PCB lands. I thought the price was about right and I would give it a go. Unfortunately, of all of the rolled pins that I could find, none of them seemed very concentric. Some of them were out of round by more than 3/32 of an inch.

I started thinking of alternatives....

My father and I have made a lots of different tools from bolts over the years and one day while looking through a box of bolts, I stumbled across a Socket Head Cap Screw. PERFECT!

Photo 1

These are 10-32 x 2" and 1/4-20 x 2" Socket Head Cap Screws. As you can see in Photo 1, I put these in a vise and drilled the heads out on my drill press. I honestly, didn't even know what size drill bit I used. I just picked something that looked about right for the diameter of the screw head.

Photo 2

I think the results were quite good. Shown is photo 2 is the 10-32 x 2" Socket Head Cap Screw drilled out. It's not perfect, but it's fairly annular and much more concentric that the rolled pins that I had found.

Photo 3

Photo 4

I then took a triangular file to the heads and cut some "teeth like" notches into the heads (Photo 3 & Photo 4).

Here in Photos 5 & 6 you can see the results from my first attempt at using my DIY Land Cutters.....

Photo 5

Photo 6

All in all, I thought the pads came out pretty nice. It takes a little bit of practice to get a feel for how deep to let the bit cut into the PCB copper. In the photo above I was making a PCB for a Michigan Mighty Mite. It took me about 5 minutes to get all of my pads cut.

One thing that I'm unsure of is how long these cutters will last. I'll try to update this post at a later time with some feedback about longevity of the land cutters. 

Let me know if you decide to give this idea a try and how it worked for you. If you do decide to make these or use these, wear eye protection and remember,  "Safety Third"! It's all on You.