PCB Toner Laminator

[HarveyH42]

**broken link removed**

Was just looking around to see what was new, in the surplus world, and saw the laminator I've been using for the past couple of years. Price has gone up a little, but got mine off a different site. $30 and 16 in stock, figured I'd point it out, just in case anybody is getting tired of the clothes iron. Works great with the thin PCB material you can cut with scissors. Haven't tried anything else.

 

[Blueteeth]

Hey,

Cheers for the pointer. I've been considering a laminator for toner transfer, as the iron on method has too many variables to get consistant results, for me at least. Also using a laminator has recently been recommended to me by several 'master' PCB makers (we're talking guys who can get consistant 0.15mm spacing). By the way, have you heard of any commercial laminators than can cope with the 1.6mm (1/16 th inch) stock copper clad?

Blueteeth

 

[HarveyH42]

Hey,

Cheers for the pointer. I've been considering a laminator for toner transfer, as the iron on method has too many variables to get consistant results, for me at least. Also using a laminator has recently been recommended to me by several 'master' PCB makers (we're talking guys who can get consistant 0.15mm spacing). By the way, have you heard of any commercial laminators than can cope with the 1.6mm (1/16 th inch) stock copper clad?

Blueteeth

Haven't really looked. I had a frustrating time with the iron and various plain paper, but wanted to make PCB at home. Bought the laminator above and some paper from Pulsar, and have had great results ever since. I don't do production work, just a few of each design, so this works good for me.
I think you might have to modify a laminator to get the thicker boards through. It's not really what the machines were designed for. Haven't opened one up, but imagine there must be some adjustment.

 

[3v0]

Pulsar used to have a section on modifing one of the GBC units to do thicker boards but I do not recall how thick. It might be there somewhere on the site.

My GBC will only do up to 1/32. There 2 or maybe 4 screws with springs under them that hold the roller together. If one backed them off or maybe added spacers you could possibly get it to work.

 

[Boncuk]

Normally every laminator with straight in - straight out technique should work to laminate directly onto the PCB.

One of the rolls must be spring loaded and pressed against the heater roll. If that kind won't work with PCBs I'd just adapt it to accept thicker material.

Hans

 

[bryan1]

Hiya guy's,
1 of my favorite hobbies is wrecking old printers etc for parts and on the weekend i got a 'digital brand laser printer'. I'm now working on using the heating roller assembly for pcb toner transfer. Although the heating element said 220 voltAC on it I did a test using DC. At 30 volts it was drawing around 700mA and within 1/2 an hour it was 150C. The original drive motor is a unipolar stepper so the whole conversion is easy to do and I reckon the results will be awesum. Depending on how it goes I'll make a section on my website showing how to do the whole conversion.

Cheers Bryan