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

Hi All,

I figure I might as well keep reporting my toner transfer failures
and successes as it may help someone else.

Brief recap of problem..
Using a wide variety of papers and laser printers, I could not get
the toner to stick to some PCB material I purchased. Prior to this
PCB material, I had very good success doing toner transfer.

During a last ditch effort to complete some circuit boards, I pre-
etched the boards in Ferric Chloride before doing the toner
transfer, this helped but still wasn't great.

Yesterday, I tried this approach again, pre-etch for about 2
minutes, followed with a gentle scrubbing with an abrasive pad
(Scotch bright). The toner transfered pretty good - about 98%.

Still not sure what the problem is with this particular batch of PCB
material but I can say that no amount of sanding, cleaning, or
polishing would allow toner to stick. So far, the only solution has
been to pre-etch it.

Perhaps as I get some time to actually experiement, I can't dig in a
little further, however, should you run into something similar, try
pre-etching your boards.

Chris