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

Hi guys, sorry that i have not kept up to date with my toner transfer
testing but i believe that i have found a great method that seems to
work for me quite well.
I had been attempting transfers using hp matte and glosy paper but
the toner would not stick to the glossy paper through the printer so
it was a good job that i used a backing sheet of normal paper to pick
up any mess stuck on the fuser. Toner stuck to the matte paper but a
white crusty substance would be transfered onto the copper whenever i
ironed the paper onto the copper. I think this was possily clay from
the paper coating.
Well, I recently bought a cheapo laminator and disassembled it to see
what needed to be done for pcb use. Basically, the pcb and paper
would fit through the pair of silicone coated rollers with them
bending to take the thickness but the flexibility of the silicone
ensured that complete contact was still made. The motor was useless
plastic-geared hunk-o-junk and the elements were not safe so i
stripped them out and currently use a variable temp hot air gun and
manually feed the laminator and worked very well, much better than i
could achieve with the iron.
I just needed to sort out a decent paper, I was going to buy some
pressnpeel when i fuond a magazine that was about to be chucked away
and i thought why not...
Well, I printed out a test circuit but some toner was literally
hanging off the page and the fuser had one or two 'loop' images from
excess toner, failiure until i remembered that the printer was set to
darkest '5' and transparencies, so i set these to back to normal and
tried another sheet...success, printout great...then, being lazy, i
thought about how can i test the transfer properties without having
to clean another board...so i scratched at the toner with my
fingernail. It released quite easily and it removed the ink from
ontop of the magazine paper but did not tear the paper..great i
thought. Time for a proper test...
Printed out another sample, used my laminator and heat gun and
attempted to transfer the toner...it worked very well. I could lift
the paper from the board leaving 90% of the toner behind without
soaking and with soaking, all of the toner remained on the copper.
The paper works so well that the sheet ends up having a nice paper-
white image left where the toner was printed onto the magazine page.
I suppose what i am trying to say (if this email wasn't long enough
already) is that if you can cleanly scratch the toner from the paper
and it removes only the paper coating ∗under∗ the toner then chances
are it will work for toner transfer.
The magazine paper worked so well that i ran into problems of the
toner actually spreading out under pressure for the first time,
indicating either too much pressure from the laminator or too mch
toner on the paper...

Anyway, up to this point, i have to thank all you guys for talking
about your different toner transfer techniques for giving me
inspiration on what to try next...hopefully my magazine publishers
won't change their paper supplies;-)

PK