[sdiy] press and peel PCB

[Tom Arnold]

On Wed, Mar 15, 2006 at 02:39:14PM -0700, amokan wrote:
>    I broke down and bought a laser printer for home to make screen
>    printing easier... anyhow, I'm curious about anyones luck with press
>    and peel PCB products. The idea of not using carbon paper and etch
>    resist pen sounds great but I've heard some negatives about PNP.
>    Any comments or better ways to do home etching without the pen method?

Everyones result is different, but...

I had good luck with PNP Blue if I was paranoid about cleaning the board
ahead of time ( clean, scrub, clean, 30 seconds in etchant, rinse, apply PNP
) but if I rushed it at all I'd wind up doing touchups.

I've switched to postive photoresist.  The boards cost about twice as much
as bare board and you spend about $50 upfront on supplied and the like, but
it Just Works(tm).  I've only wasted one board and that was a doublesided
board I completely brainfarted on and did one side backwards.

For very low quantity, I'd go with PNP and lots of patience.  For even 1
board a month I'd switch to photoresist and presensatized boards.

Note that my opinion has changed in the last few months.  I've decided that
the massive time saved by photo process is worth the small increase in cost.
Its still much cheaper then getting a batch of proto boards done by a
PCBFab and I can go through multiple iterations in a night working out kinks
and getting a layout 100% ready for the fab.

-- 
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 - Tom Arnold       -  Free Synth DIY webspace http://www.sdiy.org 
 - SynthGeek        -
 - BBD Fanatic      -  "...is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" 
 - echo evho wjxo   -    Juanita Shrugs. "What's the difference?" 
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