print circuit bords at home

[edisonboy]

I thought I saw a thread on home printed circuit boards on this forum a couple days ago. Could you post the link? If I am mistaken, does any one know about this?

 

[BrianH]

There are two basic forms of PCB development available for mere mortals such as you or I. The first uses an acid bath, whereby your pre-prepped PCB board is left to bathe in a chemical bath where the unmarked copper is washed off, leaving your PCB traces. The second uses a UV light source to burn off the excess copper, again leaving only your copper tracks.

The latter of the two ways is better from a home use point of view, since there is no hassle with chemicals to be worrying about. UV Light sources for this specific purpose can be bought at any good electronics supplier along with PCB making kits, or alternatively I have periodically seen them go for a song on Ebay!

Brian

 

[Johnson777717]

I'm not sure of the thread. You can try searching for the thread by using the "Search" command at the top of the forum main page.

There are also many sites which go through the do it yourself method of making PCB yourself. Just go to Google.com and type in PCB, or making PCB etc. You're bound to find several sites. Good luck!

 

[Barry]

Hello all,
You may find this link useful : **broken link removed**
Barry.

 

[laroche73]

Home made PC board links

Here are a few more links that may be helpful:

**broken link removed**

**broken link removed**
(look at "The 5 ways to make PCBs")

 

[Russlk]

Here is the way I make PC boards: I bought a roll of prepasted wallpaper and cut it into 8 1/2 X 11 sheets (make sure it is smooth, not textured). I set my laser printer to max dark and print the design on the pasted side of the wallpaper. I sandwitch the wallpaper and copper clad board with some felt cloth between two pieces of glass, held together with spring clamps. Put this into the oven and set the temperature to 400 degrees F and the timer to 10 minutes. After the thing is cool, put the copper clad with wallpaper in warm water until the paper floats off. Examine the pattern for breaks (I get very few) and it helps to coat large areas with permanent marker. Permanent marker is also good for fixing breaks. I use ferric chloride for etchant, available from Radio Shack.

 

[Klaus]

There are two basic forms of PCB development available for mere mortals such as you or I. The first uses an acid bath, whereby your pre-prepped PCB board is left to bathe in a chemical bath where the unmarked copper is washed off, leaving your PCB traces. The second uses a UV light source to burn off the excess copper, again leaving only your copper tracks.



Brian

Are you sure that's how the UV method works Brian? It's certainly new to me. As I understand it the blank copper is coated with an UV sensitive layer. The negative PCB track pattern is laid above this and exposed to UV light. The UV light hardens the sensitive layer on the copper, the areas masked by the negative pattern stay soft.
The soft layer is washed off and the copper underneath is then etched in a conventional acid bath, leaving only the traces that were under the UV hardened area.

This method was used when I was involved in PCB layout, some years ago now.

 

[moosapotamus]

Press-n-Peel Blue is the best!!!

https://www.techniks.com/how_to.htm

Lightyears better than UV/photo methods.


~ Charlie

 

[john1]

yes, i wondered about that description of the UV method.
the only way i know is as you describe, where the UV is
used to make the mask for the etchant.

I'm a little confused by Brian's description,
its not a method i have ever met.

John

 

[plot]

I'd personally like to hear more input from people that actually make there own PCBs... is it worth the hassle?

Most people I've heard talk about it before simply say it's a pain in the... yea... and not worth doing at all.

 

[Gandledorf]

I like the method Nigel uses on his web site personally, get some pretracked protoboard, and make some adjustments, very cost effective.

 

[Exo]

I'd personally like to hear more input from people that actually make there own PCBs... is it worth the hassle?

Most people I've heard talk about it before simply say it's a pain in the... yea... and not worth doing at all.

I make my own boards and i think it's worth the hassle. Specially because i use a lot of SMD parts. I use Eagle layout editor to design my PCB's (www.cadsoft.de) then i use a laserprinter to print the layout to a transparant film. The pcb is put under UV light with the transparant (so no light comes where the traces are to be). Then you need 2 chemical baths. 1 'developer' bath wich removes some sort of protective film wich is on the board. And the second bath acutally eats of the copper.

If you do make a lot of projects then you can let your PCB's wait for a time so you can do a couple at the same time. Preparing everything to do just one board wastes a lot of time.