Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

Well, I can say with some certainty, that the pulsar paper I have
been using worked much better than the glossy ink jet papers I tried
these past few days. As I have a collection of half-empty (or
perhaps half full) packages of ink jet papers, I thought I would
give them a try. I don't have exact model numbers, but I know I had
Epson, office Depot, and HP brands in my last batch.

The etchings I was attempting were small traces - .010" wide
(smallest for me so far). I had three boards to make and each one
took three attempts to get good transfer - each of the three ended
up with 3 different brands of ink jet paper - go figure. So much
for a specific brand working better than the others.

The worst to deal with was the HP Ink Jet paper which was coated on
both sides and was rather heavy paper. It took forever to release
from the PCB after ironing.

The etching went pretty much as normal - a bit uneven, but nothing
worse than before. I did learn that paper clips should not be used
to hang the PCB in the ferric Chloride - they disolve pretty darn
quickly.

I suspect that part of the cause for uneven etching may be due to
different thickness of copper across a PCB. Don't know for sure,
but just a hunch so far. The variation in thickness wouldn't take
very much to cause uneven etching - perhaps as little as .00005"
to .0001" would be enough to cause minor problems.

So, just thought I would share my experiences of late.

Chris