Ahh, I've done it several ways...

1) dremel with cutting wheel.  wow, what a horrible mess of powdered 
fiberglass!  And, shattering/blackened wheels, and, awkwardness if you 
have to hold the dremel at an angle sometimes.  And, guaranteed you'll 
never have a straight line.  Never again.

2) paper cutter.  Well, mine lasted for about 25 cuts.  And it was 
reasonably strong, tho not industrial-grade.  Never again.

3) nibbler.  This works, but it is certainly slow and fatiguing.  Good 
to have around, sometimes you just need to take a little bit out.

4) tin snips.  This is it!  get the kind that aren't "curved", hard to 
explain and I'm not entirely clear on this, but there exist three types: 
curved to the left, to the right, and straight.  The cuts are straight, 
but one is limited to the length of the blade, beyond that is doable but 
awkward.  But they are $15 and sit in a tool box, there when you need 'em.

5) bandsaw.  Again the cuts aren't straight (but could use some wooden 
blocks to hold things to fix this), but its fast and you can make 'em as 
long as you'd like.  Put a sheet of paper under the board so when you 
slide it on the metal base-plate is doesn't scrape off silk or traces. 
Disadvantage - well, they are large... (I used to work in a place with a 
machine shop, they had one.)

The combination of tin snips, gerbmerge for merging different designs 
together, and barebonespcb.com for cheap (ish) turnarounds of protos 
where they don't care if you have done the merge (everybody else does) 
is a winner.

Also suggest - a file.  The edges may be kinda rough, esp. with a 
bandsaw.  A file to clean them up a bit is real nice.

J


Lee McLaren wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Can anyone suggest a good way to cut fiberglass printed circuit board, I 
> currently use the old score with a Stanley knife but its very slow and I 
> am concerned that when I bend the pcb to break it off that the pcb is 
> getting bent slightly forever.
> I have tried an electric tile cutter which looks like a saw blade 
> without teeth which is coated with something hard like diamonds, it work 
> ok but is slow and creates a lot of dust.
> 
> 
> regards
> 
> Lee McLaren
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