[Jay] was searching for a method to make his own vias on homemade double-sided PCBs when he stumbled across this publish from about five years ago. The method shown right here makes mechanical vias as well as was established by [Retromaster]. There’s no soldering involved, instead he utilizes some solid core copper cable as well as a press to crush it firmly against the board.
The press is made of aluminum stock, with a couple of plates of stainless steel which are available in get in touch with with the board. The aluminum stock is simple to work with, however it’s fairly soft which is the reason for the addition of steel. He utilizes copper cable which already fits firmly in the hole with the substrate. After clipping off the excess as near to the board as possible a trip with the press leaves each side flat as shown in the inset image.
We looked with a few of the other jobs we’ve seen from [Retromaster] like the Atari 2600 in an FPGA as well as this emulated Amiga floppy drive. however we didn’t see any type of diy boards where he utilized this crushing technique.