The Gootee method

No, it isn't a birth-control thing, it's a 'ghetto' method of using a laser printer to create iron-on toner resist to PCB boards.

See:

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Thought I'd give it a go last weekend, and not having the 'special' Staples #471861 paper on hand tried using an Epson glossy inkjet 'photo'.

The results were - to put it mildly, a fair bit less than expected. The exploding air bubbles between the backing paper producing some 'interesting' audio and visual effects which I think maybe I can now file under my 'impressionist' period in art .

The question. Has anyone had success with this method, does it involve using less than 10 expletives, and what sort of paper did you use?

I've since ordered some - expensive I think - Peel 'N' Stick from Jaycar as a backup...

Cheers, Phil.

Reply to
philbx1
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Thought I might pre-empt any correction from you guys on my post. Yes, I know that the expression 'PCB boards' is probably-bably something like a 'double additive' (WTF the correct term is I dunno). Anyway, thought I'd get in first to correct myself...

Reply to
philbx1

I don't know what others are using, but I a photoresist board. I used negative resist Riston for quite a few years. It's very tough and reliable, but a pain to create the negative image for exposure. I now use a positive resist board (Kinsten), which is fairly delicate but works extremely well. And how do I do my positives? Simple. I just laser print onto transpareny film. I do two identical copies and sticky tape them together to give a good density. I then expose with a high power (800 W) halogen which has enough UV in it to do the job.

I get excellent results with this method, and its quick and simple.

What are others doing?

Cheers Glenn

Reply to
Glenn

Yes, I would have thought it fairly obvious that PCB board is a tautology. It seems logical to use either the full term Printed Circuit Board, the acronym PCB, or if you really must hybridise it, then "PC board" is fairly straight forward surely?

MrT.

Reply to
Mr.T

My set up:

Kinsten board, single transparency printed on a cheap laser printer. I adjust print properties for higher contrast & sharpness - this may not be an option on all printers.

Expose using 2 x 10" or so UV fluoro's mounted in a box + glass. Exposure time is 90 seconds. I use a bit of neoprene rubber (like wetsuit material) and a lump of aluminium to hold it down against the glass. Its pretty reliable for 8 or 10 thou tracks with 10 or 12 spacing.

It's sometimes a little inconsistent - I think the transparency may not always sit flush against the board. ammonium persulphate etch in a homebrew polycarbonate tank with a fish tank heater - it runs at about 42C and etches in 5 or 10 minutes.

For DS boards I just tape transparencies together then expose one side, then the other.

r.

Reply to
Robbo

For prototype single sided boards I use

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For double sided boards I use
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For small production runs, I use...

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I know I know, its not as satisfying when you pay someone to make your boards for you, but eh, their quality is very good, and electronic testing of every board is standard, so if you need the board done, and want to concentrate more on electronics than chemistry or art and craft, you may as well use em.

Reply to
Phil in Melbourne

True Phil - for me it depends on the lots of factors - do I only want one or two boards, is it a simple board, am I going to hack it severely during development? Commercially made boards seem to be getting cheaper and the quality/presentation is miles better than home brew boards. Home brew boards does howeveer mean I can have a proto in my hand in an hour or so. I'm not sure I could be bothered with toner xfer/peel n stick though. r.

Reply to
Robbo

Thanks Phil (in Melbourne).

The prices look good!

I'm not confident enough with Eagle layout yet and think any file I send may be totally wrong. I'm guessing some things will be lost in translation, although I may just try it anyway.

Also, I'm still deliberating over decoupling and EMI protection, so that's gonna take some time sorting out.

Reply to
philbx1

Sorry about dredging-up such an old thread (I saw my name mentioned, while doing a search). But this might be useful:

To see whether or not your PCB's Gerber files and layout, etc, are acceptable to a PCB manufacturer, I highly-recommend trying

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, which is also available via the "FreeDFM" link at
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, on Advanced Circuits' website. (In this case, DFM stands for Design For Manufacturability, IIRC.)

The freeDFM facility takes your uploaded ZIPped Gerber file set (which might need to be in "Extended" Gerber 274-X format, IIRC) and does a number of automatic tests to try to determine if the board will be manufacturable, or if there are any other problems. It then automatically emails you a report that includes lists of "possible show stoppers", and other errors, with five samples of each type of error.

For each error sample, it gives the coordinates, the error's measurement/margin, and drawings with three different zoom-views of the error's location. ALSO included in the resulting email are PDF files with high-resolution drawings of your Gerber files' layouts (essentially an on-line free Gerber file viewer). They also include their price quotes, etc, of course.

You don't need to worry, much, in advance, about the Gerber filenames and what they correspond to (although I think that they do require DOS- style naming, i.e. 8 characters max, and then a 3-char extension), because their software will immediately list all of your uploaded files and let you pick from a drop-down list, for each one, to tell it which PCB layer or other file-type each one is. (But they do also have a list, there, somewhere, of the standard Gerber file naming conventions, for several popular PCB layout software packages.)

The FreeDFM utility seems to be quite good, and very useful, and probably saves their customers and their CAM engineers a ton of time! I've also used Advanced Circuits to have PCBs made, and have been extremely satisfied with their work and service, but especially liked the almost-painless aspect that their freeDFM and automated ordering system enabled me to experience as a first-timer. Since you're in Australia, you'll almost-no-doubt be better-off finding a more-local manufacturer. But at least you can still use the freeDFM service, first, and be able to be more-confident when initiating contact with a PCB manufacturer, especially for the first time.

One detail: If you can set your Gerber "device setup" options to include "Hardware Fill", it might help to avoid "nuisance" errors related to tracks being too narrow, since, otherwise, poured copper areas might be filled with lines, instead of being "solid", and the lines might be mis-interpreted as tracks. I did have that happen, once, when I first tried freeDFM, but, weirdly, only for a small portion of my poured copper areas, and never could figure out exactly why it happened for some poured areas but not for most of them. Oddly- spaced lines could actually be seen in the "problem areas", in the PDFs of the Gerbers that they sent back, if they were magnified above something like 1200x. But, it's better to use "Hardware Fill", anyway (and "Hardware Arcs"), since the results will be more-accurately rendered, and the Gerber files will be smaller (assuming you have used any copper pours, or arcs).

Regarding your deliberations over decoupling and EMI protection, etc: Those are huge subjects (and are usually well-worth deliberating over). And I'm no expert. For PCB layout design, apparently a lot depends on the edge-times of the signals involved (i.e. not necessarily their frequency, per se). There are some truly-great appnotes (Application Notes) covering those types of considerations, at places like Analog Devices' website,

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, as well as at other IC manufacturers' sites (e.g. national.com, linear.com, et al). I can come up with some specific ones that I think are very good, if you think you don't already have enough of them. The entire Walt Jung book, "Op Amp Applications Handbook", is on line, at analog.com, too. That book, also, has a pretty good section that deals with those topics. For what it's worth, I usually try to include RF filtering on almost all system inputs, outputs, and power rails, and on most opamp inputs, and on all opamp power pins (and wherever else it seems like it might be necessary).

Spice programs (e.g. LT-Spice, the _excellent_ free one from linear.com) can actually be very useful (and enlightening), for modeling and simulating a lot of the problems that can occur with improper grounding schemes, and EMI/RF stuff. But you have to insert the proper impedances into the models, e.g. PCB traces' and wires' impedances. At the very least, if you model the inductance and resistance of your power, ground, and signal traces (and capacitance, if using a ground plane), it's pretty easy to see what happens when a ground trace (for example) is shared, that shouldn't be shared. It can also sometimes be quite eye-opening to add parasitics to the component models, i.e. parallel capacitance across resistors and series inductance for capacitors.

Sorry to have blathered-on, for so long, about all of that.

Good luck!

- Tom Gootee

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Reply to
tomg

Well, ahem, I'VE had pretty-good success, with that method.

I used the recommended paper, having tried many other types, mostly with poor results, although there are quite a few that are "almost as good". And I usually only have to use 8 or 9 expletives.

All kidding aside, though, the toner-transfer method CAN work extremely well, and can be almost painlessly easy and quick. It might take an hour or two of practice, at first, to get to that point, though. I tried to give as many details as possible, in hopes that the "practice" time would be minimal (and, mainly, so people wouldn't have to "re-invent the wheels" that I had to, i.e. just to try to save "the universe" some time and trouble). But at least you can usually just wash the toner off with acetone or laquer thinner, and start over, wasting mostly only some time.

For making "immediately-available" prototype boards without much special equipment or money, it's pretty hard to beat.

By the way, there's a LOT of good information available about different ways to make PCBs, yourself, in the Homebrew_PCBs discussion group, and its archive, at

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. [Not too long ago, there, I read about some guys who have successfully modified a couple of different inkjet printer models to use certain types of ink to DIRECTLY print the patterns onto PCBs. i.e. They can now run the boards right through the inkjet printers. (Talk about painless! I think I just might have to try that!)]

Good luck!

- Tom Gootee

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Reply to
tomg

Hey Tom,

Thanks very much for taking the time to write, also for the great amount of information. I feel kinda honoured. I've still yet to get back to using your PCB method, and now having read more know of at least one other problem apart from paper selection, iron temperature. I had the temp set to max, which is probably great if you wish to create exploding air bubbles.

Also, thanks for the links, especially regarding decoupling and EMI protection. I guess you understand why I stopped for a good long think at that point.

I'll give freeDFM a try also this week. Looks like it will help a lot.

I'm a little embarrassed though that you've probably been reading other aus.electronics subjects. Trying not to go into specifics let me just say that we Aussies don't normally swear at each other and I've only ever had help, even from the person/s that may be going a fair bit overboard in that area.

BTW, we have an Australian electronics magazine

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(the only one in captivity here) which I'd like to see an article in about your PCB method. Not sure if they - or yourself for that matter would be interested, but if anyone noticing this message might be in contact with SC (maybe Leo), it may be worth mentioning.

Anyway, thanks again for the help.

Cheers, Phil.

Reply to
philbx1

You're welcome. No problem. And thanks.

Gee, that's almost embarrassing. I'm just a regular guy; dumber than some but more stubborn than most. :-)

Actually, I use my iron at max temp, too. But I haven't measured its actual temperature. Someone also said that a lower temp might make the paper release better, after the transfer. The type of paper is probably the most critical factor. I'm not sure what kind of bubbling you had. I always get a sort-of bubbling effect when soaking the board, to get the paper to release. But none has ever exploded. If it's happening during the ironing step, maybe you should try baking the paper in an oven, first (before printing the pattern onto it). I suppose you could also get bubbling if the PCB surface had traces of acetone or some other liquid, remaining on it. Maybe you should try baking the blank cleaned/prepared PCB, first, too, or even just preheating the bare board with the iron (maybe with a clean sheet of plain paper on it to keep the surface clean), just to be sure, (and then let it cool somewhat) before putting the pattern paper on it.

Oh yeah. It's definitely not trivial. And it can be quite a pain, especially if you find out you did it wrong AFTER already doing a lot of work on a layout.

Don't sweat it.

Apparently I haven't read enough of them. But since you've "spilled the beans" preemptively, I probably will have to go have a look, now. :-)

Cool.

I'm always glad to help. It's one of my many character flaws. :-)

Good luck!

- Tom Gootee

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Reply to
tomg

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