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Making your own PCB using a laser printer

EDIT: Dunno... sounds kinda weak to me. But maybe it *does* work

Here at work we have an automatic PCB etcher/maker thing. You put in the layout somehow... and this little drill/etcher doohicky etches a copper clad board. It's pretty slick, but I haven't had to use it yet.
 
The toner transfer method is very well recognised as a cheap and quick method of prototyping PCBs which don't need very precise manufacturing techniques. Traditionally, this is usually done using acetate, which after printing is moistened with white spirit which weakens the bond between the acetate and the toner allowing it to transfer to the board. This method looks like quite a good refinement of this method.

I've not tried it myself - I've always had friends make my PCBs using laser-printed acetate, a UV light box and photosensitive etch resist. One friend even managed to make me a couple of double-sided boards, which impressed me greatly.

It does have problems, in that you sometimes get toner spread, causing excessively thick wires, and narrow gaps, and occasionally toner sometimes fails to transfer causing breaks in the tracks. The paper method is likely to be troublesome for double-sided boards, because of difficulty ensuring registration of the layers.
 
I haven't tried what is described in the article but from the printer side of things I can add some input. I do tech support for laser printers for a living and 80 pound paper is well beyond the specs on any standard laser printer in our product line. While it may likely go threw your printer, it isn't supported and may lead to an early death for the printer. Also I would wonder if it's designed for a laser printer. If it's not it's a great way to killer your fuser.
 
I will not be printing many pages (5 at the most) , so I doubt it will kill the printer. As for getting thick traces and breaks, I don't care I'll have so few components it should be easy to check the whole board prior to etching.

Superdoopercooper. I want what you have at work 🙂
 
I've had decent results with photo sensitive PCB and print out on transparency material.

There's a more detailed explanation here. (pdf).
 
DSTA,

That looks great. What would a small setup for the photo etching cost? I'm just doing a couple of boards so I'm after the cheapest setup.

Thanks

Moohoo
 
i made pcbs using both the printer toner method and the pre-sensitied boards...

If your going to make simple circuits with less than 20 components, the printer/toner method would be a lot cheaper and quicker,

but for more complex circuits, it will be A LOT easier doing it by the photo-resist way because it can produce smaller trace widths and not leave open tracks.
 
It's difficult for me to say what a setup would cost, since I have no idea of the prices in the US.

Should be pretty cheap though since it's cheap here (Germany). Depending on what you can find around the house you might not even have to buy any special equipment - just don't reuse (and make sure nobody else does) any bowls or cooking equipment you "borrow" 😉 for any other purpose - the chemicals involved are pretty nasty. And you'll want to some kind of drill that can handle the tiny bits required to drill holes for the components.

If you haven't done so, take a look at the MG Chemicals site. They have starter kits available and describe the process. I can't comment on the quality of their stuff though, I never used it.

One more thing: the author of the pdf recommends using ammonium persulphate as etchant, and that's a very good suggestion IMO. Ferric chloride might be cheaper, but it's rather messy. The wife/girlfriend/parents will not appreciate the beauty of virtually persistant light brown stains in the bathroom or kitchen 😉.
 
Thanks for all the great responses. Thanks blahblah99 for the printer vs photoetching threshold. (All good stuff to know.) I'll check out MG Chemicals and make sure I but a glass dish to do this stuff in so I won't ruin anything!

Thanks again,

Moohoo
 
<duh>

Uh.. I go to art school. I've made PCB's there before.... we used this blue paper.. it's like.. blue and the stuff comes off if you scratch it.. then we like.. design a PCB in like.. some paint program.. print it (on normal paper) and then use the photocopier to get the image onto the blue stuff.. then we heat press the blue sh!t onto a virgin PCB and then you pull it off and only the traces are left.. it's a little touchy.. but you can get it done right..
so then the virgin PCB with the stuck on traces of blue stuff goes in a vat of ACID and gets agitated for like.. a long time.. the acid eats away anything that isn't covered by the blue stuff.. and viola! PCB ala cheapo methodo.

Sorry, I don't know the technical terms for all this stuff.. but it does work.

</duh>
 
haha smp... thats a good description of the process.


there are two types of pre-sensitized boards, positives and negatives. make sure you get the right one.

there's this stuff called press-n-peel which simplifies the pcb making process a lot, but they only work down to 20mil traces/20 mil seperation. anything smaller than that and it'll give you problems.

the photo-resist method will work down to 10mil, or 5 mils if you have the skills 😉
 
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