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

I have been reading with much interest all that I can about the Laser
toner transfer method of making PC boards and after a few attempts
have been absolutely thrilled with the results I have been getting.
Although I do no think this will work well for SSOP it is still a
wonderful process. (btw I have not had time to work with this for 20
years so you can imagine my elation at where this process is today) I
am using a software package called Diptrace plus's very easy to create
components for your own library, very intuitive to use and does a
pretty fair job of autorouting and best of all it is free if your
projects stay under limited number of connections. I have uploaded a
couple of images of the last board I made. Check John M Board. Used
Diptrace autorouting on it, or a lot of it. This board was made using
Press n Peel Blue, Hp Laserjet 1012. Both films - top and bottom -
were aligned with a bright light and taped on three sides. The cleaned
PC board was then slipped into the "pouch". Used the Techniks Press at
275 deg for 3.5 minutes. Etched in the HCL – H2O2 solution - love it
thanks guys. The board traces are mostly .018 with .018 spacing. The
board overall is 3.5x4.5. Yes it is populated and works great!
If you look at the board you will see that I used a cross hatch pour.
I have found that a lot of the toner adhesion problems are caused by
air bubbles trapped between the film and the board. This air needs
somewhere to go if there is to be adhesion. The crosshatch pattern
gives this trapped air some small pockets to escape to. I have seen
this type of problem on several of the posted boards images. I hope
this idea helps.
I would also suspicion that Press n Peel will have some limited use as
my boards become more complex and I utilize finer traces. The traces
appear wider on the board when transferred than when printed. Also the
finer the traces the more problem the trapped air bubbles will create.
For what its worth and THANKS to all those in this group who have
taught so much by posting their experiences.