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Homemade Foot Pedal For PCB Drills

Homemade Foot Pedal For PCB Drills
This is a simple foot pedal switch to activate a small drill for making the holes on a pcb.
Most mini drills have a switch in their body activated by hand which is ok for most applications.
When drilling pcb though, the constant on-off needed for the holes to be drilled accurate and with minimum damage to the cooper this can became tiring to the hand, so the purpose of a foot activated switch emerges.  Although this is made with pcb drilling in mind it is not obligatory to have this only use, afterall is a foot activated switch waiting for you to find more uses for it.

 
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Step 1Materials

Materials
The materials needed are common and easily obtained through local stores in cheap prices.
We had some spare acrylic glass so we used that but you can also use wood, aluminum or any other material you can find with ease and suits you.

To start you need a mini drill along with its power supply.
  A switch to activate the drill, one from guitar pedals would be perfect but anything else with a strong spring to hold the upper plate and give a feeling to your feet is ok.
Two plates of 10mm acrylic glass 21cm long and wide enough to feel comfortable with your foot size.
4 smaller pieces to make some casing for the switch and allow cables to pass through, dimensions here are not crucial, any spares or leftovers will do.
A couple of hinges to connect the 2 plates, some M3 screws to mount them and some longer M4 to mount the switch assembly to the plate.
If you go with acrylic glass for the switch assembly, some glue for it will give a better aesthetics instead of using screws but it's up to you.




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4 comments
May 29, 2010. 9:25 PMgerardopenya says:
Good work!!
tell me. It is not helpful to use one kind of spring or its enough with the switch?
You have to push twice to go On and Off?
Do you think that it is hard to do one which you can control the amount of power from the switch , so you can control the revolutions on your drill??


Mar 26, 2012. 12:49 PMmcraghead says:
Re: variable-speed foot pedals, potentiometers and such: I have a volume pedal for a guitar with an odd spin on this (at least I found it odd when I busted it open for a repair): the variable resistor is just a photoreceptor and an LED: the pedal just moves a plastic rectangle up and down between the receptor and light, making it "see" less light and allow less signal. Allows for perfectly smooth transition from soft to loud, and the same idea would presumably work for controlling a variable-speed drill.

M
Jul 31, 2011. 8:07 PMabadfart says:
i have something like this on the vacuum that's hooked up to my table saw

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Author:pcbheaven(pcbheaven)