[sdiy] PCBs from printouts

[Neil Johnson]

On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Grant Richter wrote:
> A technique I learned from silkscreening is to use laser prints or
> photo-copies on drawing vellum.

Yep, and a cheaper alternative is tracing paper, 90gsm or thicker.  It's
best to calibrate the exposure time with some samples before going for the
proper work, although this technique is only really useful if you're going
to be making the boards yourself.

I think the original request maybe related to sending off electronic files
to a PCB house for batch prodution - they wouldn't be too happy if you
sent them bits of vellum or tracing paper!

It's a shame no-one's come up with an "OCR for PCBs" program - scan in
your foil pattern, then run a program to automatically trace out the
tracks and generate the necessary gerber files etc.  Unless anyone knows
different....

Neil

--
Neil Johnson :: Computer Laboratory :: University of Cambridge ::
  http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~nej22           +44 (0) 1223 334 477