Tried using the Press-n-Peel PCB transfer film from
This Press-n-Peel fil ain't cheap.
Anyone go any experience with this product? Any hints of waht to tyry or alternative transfer techniques would be most appreciated.
Thanks
I've tried it. Got sick of it. I think it's very unreliable for high density surface mount designs. I now use UV expose methods.
D from BC myrealaddress(at)comic(dot)com BC, Canada Posted to usenet sci.electronics.design
You can get a few small 2-sided, plated-through boards for $50 or so. It's not worth the mess of making your own boards.
John
Unless you just don't have the money (or enjoy the PCB fabrication process as a hobby), I agree with John -- these days you might as well just pony up the $50 and have some boards commercially cut: They're of much better quality with much tighter specs than what most people manage to produce at home with etching methods.
(And I say this as someone who did the whole FeCl etching bit in high school, and would build AND/OR/NOT gates out of diodes because I could get diodes for a penny each and logic ICs were more like a dime to a quarter each!)
One thing that can still be worth it is making or buying is a CNC mill: It tends to be just as capable as what *most* people manage to get from etching (in terms of reliable minimum trace spaces and wdiths), is nowhere near as finicky, and gets you a board much more quickly than the $50 "one week turn" commercial approach. The main downside is that (as with etching your own board) you still don't have plated vias, but creative use of leaded components and good routing skills can minimize how many vias you need anyway. The cool thing about a mill is that it's so much more versatile than just being a PCB cutting machine -- you can also do front panels, brackets, cases, etc., or of course just turn off the CNC portion and go wild by hand.
Finally, don't dismiss "dead bug" style construction directly on copper clad boards... if you're only making a few boards, and they're not that complex, just hand wiring them can be faster overall than drafting a schematic and laying out a PCB.
---Joel
lad
x,
For one-offs, I use pad-per-hole PCB. It's just as tedious as drawing a board (in real Sharpie or on CAD), and it's modifiable in case I missed something.
Tim
It's been a while since I've had any available and handy. Where do you get your pad-per-hole boards?
Jon
RadioShack. :P
Digikey carries various protoboard stock, but you have to look carefully. Last time I thought I ordered pad-per-hole, I ended up getting copper-one-side perfboard! Which is nice if you want to etch but too lazt to drill, but I'm not usually in the mood for all that Sharpie work...
Tim
Cripes. I think last time I looked at RS, it was more expensive than I wanted to pay (or else it wasn't there at all.) I'll look again.
Uh. If it is that hard to find, any clues how I should look? (I guess I should just take a crack at it, but since you might have already made all the mistakes and figured it out I'm hoping you may remember enough to clue me in.)
(I also wire-wrap, still, for some one-offs.)
Thanks, Jon
Toner transfer PCB making never really works very well. Making films and exposing photosensitized boards works much better. But it's not worth bothering. The blank boards, the chemicals, and the tanks cost more than sending the job out. Try some board fab house like Express PCB. When a board house does it, both sides line up, the holes are in the right places, and the holes are plated through.
John Nagle
I've been using tin plated stripboard from Farnell/Newark (part number 924-3230) it's much easier to solder than the bare copper stuff, And the 1mm holes on this board are actually 1mm diameter (not smaller like many others are).
I stuck a 3mm drill bit into the handle part of a cheap 3mm scredriver for cutting the tracks with,
"Alan" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@n7g2000prc.googlegroups.com...
Have a look at:
petrus bitbyter
I used it many years ago. If a printer does not like it try another. Preferably the kind that minimally bends the paper. With some printers if you use another paper tray it bends the paper less.
Use laminator to merge the foil with the pcb. In fact I hear people use regular paper today + laminator, google it up. Might be some kinds of paper that work better.
But why bother? Boards are so cheap today and who has time for the messy chemicals, drilling etc.
MOn a sunny day (Mon, 4 May 2009 21:04:54 -0700) it happened "Joel Koltner" wrote in :
Agreed, I had the latest bunch made locally. No more chemicals in the kitchen, no more stains, worked out cheaper too.
On a sunny day (Tue, 05 May 2009 05:49:09 GMT) it happened Jon Kirwan wrote in :
For one -offs I solder with flat cable: ftp://panteltje.com/pub/z80/sound_card_bottom.jpg
This one is older, but nice too: ftp://panteltje.com/pub/z80/graphics_card_top.jpg
Amen. Lower strays too.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
I've used PnP Blue successfully with an old HP LJ-4ML and the results are okay.
As others have recommended, going with a commercial house often makes sense.
However ...
Try this: Print your pattern on a plain piece of paper using the same feed path that you would use to manually feed single sheet, heavy stock. Then cut a piece of PnP that's, say, 1/2" wider on three sides and 1" wider on the feed side. Affix that to the previously printed paper, over the printed pattern, matte side up. If you have any, use a piece of "laser printer labels" stock (the stuff for address/return labels) to stick it down on just the leading edge. The adhesive on labels won't do Bad Things to the printer; clear tape or masking tape might. Then overprint that sheet with your pattern. Trying to feed just the PnP film, without paper backing, will rarely work well (as you've seen).
If there's room, it's also a good idea to tile your pattern so that you print two or four at once, even if you only intend to make one board. Lots of little things can go wrong (stray cat hairs!) with the transfer to the copper laminate, or the etching, or the drilling.
Also, if you don't already, for homebrew projects consider using 1/32" board stock instead of 1/16". It's plenty stiff for most small projects and has the GREAT benefit of being easily cut with ordinary scissors. Less dust when drilling holes, too.
And, when you're done, you can get tin-plating solution that helps keep down the oxidation of the copper traces. MG Chemicals makes a solution that has a decent shelf life and is easy to use. More toxic chemicals!
But, unless you're doing it for the experience/glory of doing it, a commercial house is the way to go. You might even get extra copies of your board if they tile it to fill-in a stock panel size.
-- Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
Oh absolutely. DIY PCB is a waste of time, effort, resources, space and money. Plus you get an unreliable, unsightly mess with no soldermask or silkscreen. If you do want to quickly build some circuitry, I have a bunch of surfboards for SMT parts, then I solder them down to a big piece of copperclad board to get a nice ground plane. However, I did make some PCBs with the Radio Shack dry transfer films years ago; it worked but boy did it take a lot of time.
One week? ONE WEEK? Try APC, more like one day.
Let's see, the "big" pad-per-hole perfboard is here:
As for Digikey, hmm they seem to have changed their homepage colors a little bit. Anyway,
Tim
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