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Printing Circuit Boards?

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sjaguar13

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I was looking into guitar effects and found this ready-to-transfer printed circuit board - **broken link removed** What do I do with it?
 
there are a few steps involved

You need to make a negative of that layout
develop the negative
use the negative on a pretreated copper covered board
delvelop the board
etch the board to remove the un wanted copper leaving only the tracks
drill holes in the board.

Those are the basic steps some of the stuff you will need:
mylar film (use this to make a tranlucent copy of your drawing, use it in place of paper in a photo copier)
photo sensitive film ( to make the nagative)
devoloping fuild for the film
UV light setup to expose the film and board
photo sensitive treated blank PCB
devoloping fuild for the board
etching tank and fluild or cystals


If this is a one off and you don't intend making other boards I would suggest using a veroboard, takes long to assemble but cheaper and faster if your not setup for making PCBs
 
That circuit looks rather complex for a veroboard project. You might end up getting frustrated by making mistakes or ruining your components and board. Veroboards are more suited for circuits with fewer components.

It might cost you a little more but I think it's going to save you a lot of headache and ultimately valuable time if you do the following:

- Buy a piece of plain single-sided PCB and a bottle of etchant(Ammonium Persulphatte). Total cost should be around US$10 or less.
- Use a graphics program to dimension the circuit diagram exactly.
- Print and cut out two copies of the diagram.
- Cut the PCB to the exact dimension of the circuit diagram.
- Glue one copy of the diagram face up onto the PCB, copper side.
- Use a sharp tool and make small indents by following the component holes on the diagram.
- Remove the diagram from the PCB, and clean the PCB well with dish washing detergent. You should still be able to see the tiny and shallow indents you made earlier.
- Place the second cut-out diagram next to you PCB and use a permanent ink marker and copy the tracks by free hand like joining the dots onto the PCB. If you make any mistake, use a cotton-bud dipped in mythalated spirit to erase. You need to squeeze out the excess spirit before erasing to prevent runs.
- Leave the marker ink tracks to dry completely for about 2 hours.
- Prepare etchant and etch the board.
- After etching, remove the permanent marker ink from the copper track with mythalated spirit and wash the PCB with dish washing detergent.
- Drill holes as required.

Your finished PCB might not look as neat or professional as using the expose and develop method, it certainly is far easier than the veroboard method.

If you have a small project with fewer components, you may use the veroboard method. However it's very easy to place the components on the wrong rows or columns unless you make a large visual template with marked component placements. I have a veroboard template made out here if anyone is interested:

http://home.iprimus.com.au/peterwu/Electronics/PS24V5A/Power Supply2.html
 
Wuey's method is OK but there other options: You can purchase coated paper or plastic or wallpaper, have the pattern mirrored and copied with a laser copier onto the coated material. Place the pattern on the copper clad board and transfer it using heat and pressure. Do a Google search for "toner transfer method"

The pattern given is not the right size, you have to save it to your hard drive, take it into a photo editing program and size it 1:1. I use Adobe Photo Deluxe 2.0, it took two tries to get it the right size.
 
Wuey said:
That circuit looks rather complex for a veroboard project. You might end up getting frustrated by making mistakes or ruining your components and board. Veroboards are more suited for circuits with fewer components.

The circuit is only a double opamp, both in inverting mode, followed by a simple passive tone control network - it would be easy to do on veroboard (particularly if you hang the tone control components on the pots!). But aside from that, you can buy ready made PCB's from the same website!.
 
sjaguar13 said:
I was looking into guitar effects and found this ready-to-transfer printed circuit board - **broken link removed** What do I do with it?

a) Purchase a coper clad sheet of requird size
b) Take laser print of your PCB tracks in to a transparent film
c) Go to a screen printer. Tell him to expose this on your Copper clad sheet
d) Purchase Ferric Chloride
e) Make a concentrated solution with the chemical
f) put your PCB in the solution and keep it in the sun light for 2 hrs.

Your PCB is now ready for drilling
 
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