markland556 said:Well i usally just get PCB's made from those useal chinese places.
But i would like to start saving money.
I was wondering what options i have.
Iv seen the laser printer iron on ones.
UV light ones...
I only have InkJet printers in my home, they are nice, but i dont know if they are up to the task.
Id really like to make some sort of setup to where i can just make a design in Eagle, print it at home and get along making it.
Id really like to stay away from as many chemicals as possible.
Also how easy is it to do double sided PCB's?? Becasue i think i need to do some re-designing in Eagle.
For that u can use a PnP foil or even pages from certain magasines. U'l find info about that on diferent threads. For realy simple PCB's u can use a permanent markermarkland556 said:well iv looked through alot of threads and done some googling. It seems to me that the best way is the photoresistant way, but they say you need a darkroom and the cost of chemicals is only worth it if you make alot of boards.
In my situation im only going to be making simple boards every couple weeks. There is maby 1-3 IC's and some resistors, capacitors, pin headers. Nothing special. What kind of quality do i need to make something like this work right?
markland556 said:Well i usally just get PCB's made from those useal chinese places.
But i would like to start saving money.
I was wondering what options i have.
Iv seen the laser printer iron on ones.
UV light ones...
I only have InkJet printers in my home, they are nice, but i dont know if they are up to the task.
You don't need a darkroom. I don't even use "safelights". When I first started making photo PCB's (15+ years ago), I thought all that stuff was necessary, too. I then realized that the photoresist is nowhere near as sensitive as photo film. If it is, then why does it take so long to expose with UV lamps 4 inches from the board? As an experiment, I tried it without all that darkroom stuff (in the lab under normal fluorescent lighting) and got excellent results. Haven't worried about it since. The chemicals are not that expensive either, all you really need is developer and etchant. I used to spray my own boards with sensitizer, but that is expensive. (At the time, I didn't care, my company bought the supplies.) Now, I just buy my board stock pre-sensitized.markland556 said:... but they say you need a darkroom ...
Before I used the photo method, I mounted a fine point permanent marker in a flatbed pen plotter. I would draw the traces right onto bare copper, then into the etchant. Worked really well, but the size of the pen tip limits the minimum trace width and isolation.Tarsil said:For realy simple PCB's u can use a permanent marker
Cheap picture paper works well.. I have only done on magazine paper one. Was bad, cheap thin paper, the laser crunched it up.HarveyH42 said:"I don't bother with any fancy Press'n Peel or photo paper, plain and ordinary magazine paper works well for me."
I think you're wrong, I will not go back and search the threads. BUT, I think it was an adult magazine mentioned way back in a thread.Hero, you throw this in everytime this topic comes up, but you never specify which grade magazine paper you use. There are atleast three typical grades, some magazines use them all in a single issue. Guess we can rule out the high gloss photo pages for obvious reason (stuck together most likely), that leaves the regular gloss and the recycled news-print pages.
HarveyH42 said:Hero, you throw this in everytime this topic comes up, but you never specify which grade magazine paper you use. There are atleast three typical grades, some magazines use them all in a single issue. Guess we can rule out the high gloss photo pages for obvious reason (stuck together most likely), that leaves the regular gloss and the recycled news-print pages.
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