PCB Copying

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Hmm..doesnt sound too bad.. I *was* planning to rebuild my Class-D 2020 amplifier from autocostruire, but with top quality components! Unfortunatly they are unwilling to provide a new pcb :(

Would you be able to recommend somewhere UK based who offer this service?
 
Code said:
Hmm..doesnt sound too bad.. I *was* planning to rebuild my Class-D 2020 amplifier from autocostruire, but with top quality components! Unfortunatly they are unwilling to provide a new pcb :(

Would you be able to recommend somewhere UK based who offer this service?


Do you have a schematic ? im sure some one on the forum could do it if you pay them a little $$$ to do a board design for you.
 
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That said, it is possible. I did it a few times in the past when the original films ( oh how I miss analog technology ) were gone or damaged. Most of the time they suffered from moisture.

If the board was important I went to a print shop and had an original pcb ( with all the parts desoldered !!! ) photographed with a 1:1 camera loaded with a high contrast film. In other words a film that made everything black that was not entirely white.

Then I retouched the new film with those press-and-peel tracks/pads and a scalpel. Especially the pads needed retouching. When it was done I could continue with my "new original" film.

That's all. It may sound obscure but I was quicker with analog techniques than with modern digital techniques....

Problem nowadays is that those 1:1 cameras are obsolete. If you find an old fashioned printshop they might still have one.
 
Re PCB Copying

Had exactly the same problem with my Otala amp boards which over the years through wear and component changing had come to the end of their life. I depopulated a board, cleaned it up and then photographed it with digi camera.Loaded image into Adobe photoshop, and adjusted image size to correct board size.
I found this came ot reasonably well with little distorion. I then used Adobe to white the background(board) and black the tracks.
Then printed onto blue transfer and proceeded with the transfer method to make boards.
Seems a bit of a lengthy procedure, but hey now I have boards again for my beloved Otala amps.
Oh and BTW the boards although not fine tracks were double sided.
 
jean-paul said:
photographed with a 1:1 camera loaded with a high contrast film. In other words a film that made everything black that was not entirely white.

I used to use this film for "everyday shooting". It's called ectographic HC slide film. It has an ISO of something like 2 to 8, but it also has huge reciprocity failure, so I often found myself shooting at 0.1 ISO and overprocessing. Needless to say, I would often need to shoot a whole role of the same image at different settings and hope for the best. If you do it just right, however, you can get gray scale and the grain is spectacular. Highly recommended for the photographer nerds out there.

-d
 
Sorry but not that easy, AT ALL.

I have done it, you will never ever have a straight hi contrast BW image.

Human eyes see a clear distinct image because of all the brain processing power, detects edges, considers, say, all "green metallic" coloured areas as tracks, different from PCB base material background, ignores flux specs all over the place, etc. ; dumb scanner just reads varying levels of Red/Blue/Green light.

You'll end with a recognizable colour picture, which will get a confusing greyscale one, which will turn into a B/W one in a very inconsistent way.

I *have* gotten usable results, but by loading the "colour picture" as one semi transparent layer, just as a guide, and redrawing over it in 2 bit colour B/W .

Takes much longer than expected.
 
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