Mark,You can get breakout boards for these at online retail outlets. Sparkfun.com sells them.
Yes, I don't trust any manufacturer to safely process etching PCB!I remember some very old posts on this board talking about environmental impact and waste concerning etching chemicals. As far as the boards go environmental impact should be the same. As far as etching goes, there are etchants that are 'green' alternatives to ferric chloride, if that's what you are worried about.
Is this just an opinion based on no facts, or do you have anything to support this? What in house etching process are you comparing this too? I'm no chemist, so I have no idea.I would trust a PCB house over in house etching most days, they're likely going to have less of an impact than doing it at home will by large and far.
Because you can buy them at a store doesn't make them non-toxic. They are classified as toxic substances. I'm not going to drink them, that's for sure.Muriatic Acid is stomach acid, it's not toxic at all. You can buy it at most hardware stores.
Hydrogen Peroxide isn't toxic either you can buy it at drug stores =)
There's a place close buy that does this. They were trying to get me to plate my motorcycle frame. I guess a shiny frame somehow makes it faster. Something like stickers. I'm going to head over there sometime soon and see what they will do.Concentrated they're dangerous though. And neutralizing it isn't the problem, it's keeping the ionic copper out of the ground water. Dissolved copper is toxic to most critters. A recycling center would likley throw you out on your ass if you brought a used etch bath =) The best solution for disposal would be to take it to a local Metal Finishing plant companies that do electro plating. They have waste treatment systems that are designed to take care of this stuff. I worked at one for 10 years. If you're lucky you can find a friendly waste treatment operator that'll take care of it for you, even small shops process so much waste that a few gallons of etchent would be no problem.
They are called 'plcc' adapters. My local part supplier has them for 95 cents each.Hi group,
I need an adapter to use to mount a QFN28 IC to my perf board. I'm looking at using either a CP2103 or FT232R USB to Serial IC. Nice little ICs but hard to mount.