Electronic Circuits and Projects Forum

I like your cheep etching solution.

Press-n-Peel is a waste of money, I just use ordinary magazine paper. Just print your circuit onto it, iron to a clean piece of copper clad board and wast it off with water.

Originally Posted by Hero999

I like your cheep etching solution.

Press-n-Peel is a waste of money, I just use ordinary magazine paper. Just print your circuit onto it, iron to a clean piece of copper clad board and wast it off with water.

The etching solution is not really mine, I am just trying to get the word around. I should have mentioned that the Hydrogen Peroxide is only $ 0.50 a pint.
That works out to about $ 13.00 for three gallons of etching solution. And no shipping because it is available locally, even in a little hick town were I live.

"Press-n-Peel is a waste of money". Not if you tried many of the others with very limited success and a lot of frustration. Maybe there are differences in the different manufactures toners?
No frustration is worth a lot to me.

Heck, I use photo resist board for real PCBs, it doesn't work out that expensive, it's probably cheaper than Press-n-Peel.

It's easy to build a UV exposure, the cheapest way is to lay your board with the artwork on top on a table held down with a peice of glass. Use compact black light for the UV source, the easiest way is to put it in an old desk lamp and direct the beam at your PCB.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?...ia=UV&doy=25m8

I know there are probably cheaper places to buy these from and don't use the incandesant type they're crap and don't last for very long.

Look, here are some cheaper alternatives:
http://www.blacklight.com/items/FTBPESL13T-BLB
http://www.bulbman.com/index.php?mai...ducts_id=11675 - needs a holder with ballast though.
http://www.doityourself.com/invt/0307207

It's cheap and works, but muriatic acid is pretty darn strong even at 1/3rd concentration. Mixing is a hazardous process (add acid to the peroxide, not the other way around!).

Actually there is a guy on eBay who sells bulk ferric chloride chunks in 10 lb lots for $40, shipping included. Etching solution actually takes quite a bit of solid per liter, but $4/lb is pretty darn affordable. You might want to find somebody else in town to split this much material with.

http://search.ebay.com/search/search...de+&category0=

Originally Posted by Rolf

Question: To save Press-n-Peel someone talked about taping it to a regular sheet of paper. I have been reluctant to feed tape through my laser jet. Any comments?
.

I'm one of the people who recommends that. I just use normal clear/scotch tape and it's never shown any signs of melting or anything. It certainly extends the use of a sheet of press-n-peel... personally I do a lot of small boards and I can often get dozens of boards out of a single sheet, and at around $1.50 a sheet that makes the cost of the press-n-peel practically negligible in my opinion.

I've become interested in CuCl2 + HCl etching, as seen at: http://members.optusnet.com.au/%7Ees...uCl/index.html
That formulation has the advantage of being regenerable by simply bubbling air through it, and at most occasionally adding some water or more (cheap) acid. The hard part, as I gather from that page, is making the solution in the first place, as you need to purchase or make the CuCl2, and it can be very expensive to purchase, at least from chemical supply places. However, I found both Copper (II) Chloride and Copper (II) Oxide for sale at a fireworks supply place (skylighter.com) very cheaply (less than $10 a pound). I would like to talk with someone who's a bit more knowledgeable about chemistry before getting into this type of etching (for safety guidelines, and to make sure I know exactly how to monitor and regenerate it, so I don't ruin it), but it definitely seems appealing never having to throw out my etching solution, instead just being able to keep regenerating it, even if it means I have to put in a little more effort to storing and regenerating it.