Retrofitting of a plain table plotter for printed circuit boards prototyping

This article describes a retrofitting of a plain table plotter model NE-245, manufactured by EMG (Hungary) which was technologically outdated and out of service. This equipment was an A3-paper plotter. The goal of this retrofitting was to change this machine into a robust and reliable CNC plotter to be proper for printed circuit boards (PCB) prototyping. The retrofitting was based on technological upgrade of the mechanical parts and electro-electronic devices and also a software development using the Mach3 CNC controller. PCB samples produced by the retrofitted machine are shown to validate the equipment.