making pc boards

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I use Lacquer Thinner to remove my HP toner from the boards.

Been doing this a long time. After etching and removing the toner, I polish the copper with metal polish. The kind you may find at an auto parts store to polish mag wheels. Then clean with soap and water.
This has been the best method I've found so far- you can't believe how good the tracks look afterwards. No discoloration, and quite shiny and clean.

BTW, I use a laminator to apply the toner to boards, 3 or 4 passes on highest setting. I bought it used on EBAY for 50.
After etching, I add the silk screen with parts reference via toner to top side, and then seal with a green or white film. Looks great.

a decent site explaining the process is here
Home PCB Fabrication


Bob
 
This wasn't a complex design.

A simple laser printer was all that was required.

I'm sure, with a bit of practice, more complex designs could be achieved.
 

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The one thing that might be critical is the type of paper. I am in Belgium, so if you are not, you are very likely not to find the exact one. It's actually cheapest, noname brand sold in Makro/Metro around Europe called "Aro". It's semi-gloss, medium thick.

The PCB is prepared by 000 steel wool and wiped off with acetone. Transfer is done with usual Philips steam iron, with no water, hottest setting. Printing is done with Samsung ML1640, with refilled toner (not critical for success). Darkest setting, economy off, 1200dpi. Paper is a bit hard, so it could happen that cheap 40eur Samsung either gets stuck or paper moves while printing. Check geometry of the print afterwards, especially if you are doing double sided boards. You might be luckier with better printers.

I press paper with iron without moving for 15s or so, to make sure it sticks to the pcb first. Then I start sliding over it with iron's edges, the straightest one you can find, to maximize pressure on every spot. I then alternate flat ironing with "edge slide", making sure I cover all of the surface. My iron's edges are not straight, so I am planning to find one with at least one straight edge. I keep alternating flat and edge ironing, to prevent pcb from cooling down during the process.

Pressing is done after 5mins or so. I leave it to cool down to 20C, then I start taking the paper off slowly, by keeping one finger at the paper, sliding it as paper detaches. I pull the paper with other hand, to prevent violent detach that might pull toner off. I usually put thin 2mil edges around my PCBs so that I have and indication that things will stay in place when I start pulling.

Cut with hacksaw and soak in FeCl3.

The whole process is done in half hour time. Remove toner with acetone.

Hope this will help you guys spend some more time with your kids

Two questions:
1) At the highest iron temperature, the paper starts browning and smoking. Is this OK, or is the iron too hot?
2) Has anyone tried using photocopier prints instead of laser printer?

vkj
 
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Hi KatieandDad,
I use Lacquer Thinner to remove my HP toner from the boards.
Me too. Works great. Steel wool will also do the job, follow up with alcohol.

This is a simple design, how would it be with more complex designs.
C1 should have been moved to the lower left hand side. Then the traces would have worked out much better. It's always important to lay traces out so they are as direct as reasonably possible. Jumpers would have been better for that layout in the event C1 had to stay there for some reason. Your traces are also a bit close.

Another reason to have issues similar to this is applying too much pressure on the heating device (an electric iron in my case). The results I had were extremely good, but I'm also using the blue paper in an Konica-Minolta printer. My HP 5L also works out great.

Hi vkj,
The printers/copiers that I used had re-cycled toner cartridges, so this could be a reason for the failure.
If nothing else, that would be a great reason for it not to work. The instructions I received with my blue transfer paper warned against non-OEM toner. Only use the exact toner and parts for your copying machine.

A copier should work fine. It's as close to a laser printer as you can get without using a laser printer. The process is the same, differing on how they put the image / artwork on the drum. The ugly truth now rears it's head. Most photocopiers do not do a 1:1 scale when copying. This is also a different scale for both x and y directions. Not fun, and most of your parts will no longer fit.

-Chris
 
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Hi zdr,
Really nice job there! I am impressed.

The only thing that I have found that works is the blue transfer paper. It's expensive, but far less so than any other way I can think of. With any luck, the right stuff will come my way. I just have to keep looking. Your description will help though, thank you!

-Chris
 
Two questions:
1) At the highest iron temperature, the paper starts browning and smoking. Is this OK, or is the iron too hot?
2) Has anyone tried using photocopier prints instead of laser printer?

vkj

I guess can measure the temperature my iron produces at highest setting. My paper is not smoking&browning even after I leave iron on it.
 
Reading the posts so far its obviously down to experiment between your iron ant the paper used.

I certainly had no problems burning the paper but had problems tranferring the toner so my iron may not be quite as hot as yours.

It costs very little to experiment.

A Photocopier uses similar toner to a laser printer so the results should be similar.
 
Has anyone tried the Murton Spikes software. I'm having enormous problems with it. I can draw out my own designs by hand using the Human Brain to work out the paths that I want. Try putting the manual inputs into the software - I've reverted to Microsoft paint.

There are so many better solutions than MS Paint. I'm currently giving the free DESIGNSPARK program a try and it seems to work very well. There is a basic tutorial for schematic capture and PCB design that any new user should do, it is easy:
DesignSpark | The gateway to online resources and design support for engineers

There is a section on the site for additional parts libraries, and you can also import Eagle parts libraries.

It will make a 3D view of your board at the push of a button as you can see below. This is a copy of the discontinued Ross Compressor guitar pedal that my son is going to build:
 

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Hi KatieandDad,
Reading the posts so far its obviously down to experiment between your iron ant the paper used.
Yes, every kit and all web instructions either point you to a commercial heating press, or experimentation. That's what I had to do and it cost me four sheets before I had usable results. Don't ask how many photo paper sheets I've gone through. No joy yet on that front. The actual material transferred is a fine plastic powder that you are melting onto the PCB. Keeping that in mind may help some of you.

A Photocopier uses similar toner to a laser printer so the results should be similar.
However, most photocopiers do not make a 1 to 1 copy in scale. This will trash many PCB artwork unless the board is extremely narrow on the side that becomes shrunk. The HP printers seem to work the best due to the extra fine particle size of their toner.

-Chris
 
i use ExpressPCB and etch my own boards ......

here is what I do .....

1)Design my board in expressPCB.....
2)Take screeshot of board .....
3) import screenshot into MSpaint and invert colors and save as a new image ....
4) Import image into Paint.net (its free , comes with office.net) and add a layer .....
5) now trace out the PCB using the drawing tools provided (in black) ....
6)when finnished tracing the pcb disable the original layer and you will be left with the PCB design , then save the PCB image ....
7) now print out your PCB design and etch your board .....

It is a bit drawn out but I have etched dozzens of boards this way and it works well .....

Cheers

Wow, that is a lot of work!

In DESIGNSPARK you can either use the Gerber files, or first turn off all layers except for the metal layer, export it to a .bmp, bring it into Paint, invert colors to make the black background white, then make it black and white to make the now red traces black. It is about 4 clicks to do this including opening the pull down menus.

Here is a thread on DESIGNSPARK, it may not be the best but is quite good considering that it is free. Doing the tutorial makes it easy to use:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/equi...ricted-pcb-design-software-rs-components.html
 
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I just tried it. I started from blank schematics and I got stuck right at placing the first component. Spent 10 minutes searching all menus and context menus, then I decided to go back to eagle. It's amazing that so many untalented software developers are employed these days.

Just do the tutorial if you are serious about it. I have said this twice now.
The tutorials are available from the Help pull down menu.
 
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