WHATCH OUT I DONT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE NEXT TEXT!

For everyone who always wondered how you can make your own PCB (electronic circuit boards)

this is the way to do it!

Needings:
- 1 Sheet of stickers (A4)
- 1 Laser printer
- 1 PCB (size and thickness as needed) with 35um of coper is fine
- 1 Cloth Iron
- 1 Tile with water
- Ets material (i used Fe3Cl)
(its 250gramm with half liter of water)
- 1 cordless dril with 1mm drill bit (and a 1,5mm one)

Offcourse you need to have drawn your pcb layout in a program.

First step is to pull of the stickers from the A4 sheet. What we need is as bad surface possible for the toner.

We then print our PCB layout on the sheet
(now carefull else you loose the toner!)

Now you cut the A4 sheet to just fit the copper PCB.

Turn the toner side to the copper side and lay them down on some old newspapers (on the face of Blair for example )

You then get the iron wich is heated to max temp!And with one wipe You stick the toner with sheet to the copper pcb!

Now don't let it cool down and ditch it in the pile/tray of water! if you can supporting the A4 sheet with a flat piece of plastic/glass/steel sheet etc.

after 10seconds the A4 sheet will come loose and you can carefully rip it of!
If you did it right you can find any toner back on the A4 sheet! The toner has fully melt to the PCB (copper side).

If you see small imperfections don't care, get your edding (or other permanent marker) and draw in the copper wich also needs to be retained.

Now dry carefully the PCB and ditch it in the premixed ets liquid (the Fe3Cl)

you will see that the copper is eaten away by the Fe3Cl

be carefull with Fe3Cl its bad for HUmand and animals NEVER EVER ditch it in the draining! Threat it as chemicals!

Now you only need to drill carefully the small holes for the components!

WHATCH OUT I DONT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE NEXT TEXT!

Regards,

Tks

p.d. Atleast also this process is saved on here by ME


[Edited on 6/4/07 by tks]
Rescued attachment PCB After dril and ets.JPG

If you fancy making your own PCBs:
1) NEVER add water to the ferric chloride, ALWAYS add the ferric chloride to the water, a little at a time. Unless you want your face burned off! (so much easier than rabbiting on about the perils of exothermic reactions).
Of course the usual safety precautions apply. If you don't know what these are, have your boards made by a professional.
2) Use a solid tungsten drill bit. HSS will not last two minutes. A mini-drill is favourite, preferably in a stand.

[Edited on 6/4/07 by Confused but excited.]

Sorry mate! i used a plastic bottle to make the mixture, it had a bit of water in it
i added the full 250gramms to it, then i added the rest of the water 0,5litres..

nothing happened!!

anyway if you wish i alter the post but i cant see the difference in reaction adding water to the wine or wine to the water!??

the drills i used was CO HSS

Tks

that's an old one - I thnk you need to have your artwork reversed and set copier to maximum contrast to get the most toner onto the sheet.

If you are lucky, the toner on its on is enough and you shouldn't need to use a ink paen - I have dound that normal permanent markers work fine.

Check that the copier is exactly 1:1 - they usaully are not but very close - if it is a bit out, the IC pins may not fit - the printing may be out a little bit too.

for drlling, I use a tiny electric hand drill.

I used that method when i was young. I realised that toner would work, but i used normal paper, ironed the patten on then soaked the paper till it came offthe non track areas.

What a mess, but worked well.
Still have FeCl3 all over some clothes!

i print directly from the pcb design program. Its there where instead of printing the image only once i think he does it 3times to secure good toner quantity!

The normal paper/glossy paper one is tried by me! but it takes a hell of more time because you need to let it soak!
Remember in my case its just ripping of just like the stickers.

Yes; normal permanent marker isn't affected by de mixture of FeCl..

Tks

quote:

---

Originally posted by tks
anyway if you wish i alter the post but i cant see the difference in reaction adding water to the wine or wine to the water!??

---

mhh maybe it was the fact that the FeCL wasn't liquid it where balls..dunno..

anyway its all in this topic..

Tks

The printing method does work, but I've found for anything other than really wide tracks its just not good enough and you have to fill in too many gaps with pen/solder (depending on when you find them! )

When I next make up some boards I'm going to try to beg/borrow/steal a UV exposure box and use acetate to transfer the pattern - hopefully should get a much more reliable setup then

on the ferric chloride issue - its a fairly nasty chemical, you can spend days with yellow fingers after using it! it reacts fairly strongly with Ali too - much more so than with copper so be careful with it.