Cutting Pin Header Strips

I needed a few strips of single-row pin headers, but the parts bin was empty.

I hate it when that happens.

The heap disgorged a handful of double-row strips and, of course, I Have A Machine Shop.

So: no problem.

This is, I admit, not cost-effective, but it took about 15 minutes to slit the aforementioned handful of strips right down the middle and get back to soldering.

The trick is to use an ultra-thin slitting saw, rather than a regular saw. The one here is 4 mils thick and the better part of 7/8″ in diameter; call it 0.1 mm x 22 mm. I think it came with one of the Dremel tool kits a long while ago.

Cut about 1 mm deep on the first pass, then cut through on the return to avoid having the saw deflect too much. Run about 100 mm/min, 1000 rpm, and no coolant. Line it up by eye, type manual CNC commands into EMC2, and it’s all good.

The trick is finding a mandrel that doesn’t collide with the vise; my larger saws have a rather thick screw-and-washer arrangement that doesn’t fit. I think some padding (chopped-up credit cards?) between the longer pins, mounting the vise vertically, and grabbing the longer pins would fix that. The catch might be clearance between the top of the vise and the bottom of the spindle motor.

Better to just buy some single-row strips. Sheesh… but if all you have is a CNC mill, you have plenty of solutions.

Another slitting saw repair is there…