Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs
Subject: Re: [Homebrew_PCBs] Maximizing toner transfer paper use
From: "Mike Young" <mikewhy@...>
Date: 2005-12-21
----- Original Message -----
From: "scratch_6057" <dml.empsrch@...>
> In the "Board" module of Eagle if you go into the "Print setup" and
> then select the "Page" button, you can set the output to Top, Bottom,
> Left, Right for printing rather than the default of Center. The PDF
> File ( Files > Toner_Transfer > Eagle "Lite" Multi Output )
> "4 Way Prt from Eagle Lite.pdf"
>
> http://f5.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/EIqpQ1mk4SD3FASWsQ6dof_jUbBKC9hT4Wd_begx
> baQBGzWT2KCG2DtT9TotG7LQ_YC_UAbTSdAqCdRvMZitd1xQk0N4efY2yIU/Toner_Tran
> sfer/Eagle%20%22Lite%22%20Multi%20Output/4%20Way%20Prt%20from%20Eagle%
> 20Lite.pdf
I doubt this link will do any better. Probably an issue with Yahoo logins
and cookies, rather than simply one of links and things. You can keep
multi-line URLs together by quoting them in angle brackets, '<' and '>'.
http://f5.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/MKapQ_YmP483CeTMGotsiRM7hzltWDnDJaaRN5O77sFOvKYEEadRf_xeqHmeg_ipf4txGsov32UcH_G0NFrdDaKo77pCOq2SCypb6Fi30KtQl2k/Toner_Transfer/Eagle%20%22Lite%22%20Multi%20Output/4%20Way%20Prt%20from%20Eagle%20Lite.pdf
>
> shows PROPORTIONALLY what the output looks like, this is actually a
> Photoshop edited SCAN of a real printed page with everything set for
> Landscape Printing. Red lines indicate the 8.5 X 11 sheet size. If
> you are doing a double sided board it might help to use the X or Y
> axis as a "hinge" on one edge of the board. Even if you cut all four
> images from the sheet, I think this is faster than the "cut material
> and tape to carrier sheet" way of doing things.
Are you printing each image into the different quadrants, then? Four passes?
I got pretty good at combining the separate images in Photoshop, and then
printing from there. But it's still tedious. cam2images.ulp helps by
automating the image export from Eagle. cam2print.ulp does something similar
for printing, but only one image per page.
At $1.50 per sheet, I'm still pretty miserly with the Pulsar paper,
especially for the very teensie weensie boards I do. Either way you do it,
though, you still have to trim off the excess. Trimming the bulk of it
beforehand seems as good a way to do it as any. Excepting that the cut off
has a real chance of being tainted and contaminated with skin oil, and thus
one step closer to garbage, each time I pick it up to handle it.
I think the only answer is to find cheap paper, something cheap enough even
that the terminally neurotic can stand to knowingly "waste". :)