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

I'm still having trouble getting really nice transfers, I've seen some
of the pics here so I know that it is possible to get very clean,
solid traces. My minimum trace width is 10 thou and my maximum is 50
thou, with most traces being 25 thou. Strangely, the breaks are
almost all on the 25 thou traces with a few on the 50 thou traces.
The 10 thou traces usually come out very nicely. When I'm prepping
the board:

I'm scrubbing with a green scrub pad in 4 directions (width, length
and both diagonals), around 5 - 10 times over the entire board in each
direction (basically until it really shines and I see no spots at
all). Then I scrub more lightly in a circular motion.

I'm washing with acetone on a paper towel and my last wipe with
acetone generally has virtually no color to it.

During all of this I am wearing latex gloves.

I use canned air to lightly blow off the dust and I then cover the
board with a clean paper towel.

I then put on new latex gloves and cut my paper to size, affix it to a
piece of regular paper with Avery label and print my image, lay it on
the board and iron it for around 3 minutes (moving the iron a lot
because the image is bigger than the iron).

I wait until the board has cooled and then place it in water (a little
warmer than room temp).

When the paper mostly slides off I take out the board.

Any ideas why I am still getting broken traces? Anyone near the Ann
Arbor, MI area willing to let me watch them do a transfer so I can see
if theres something I'm forgetting? I've tried various photo paper,
magazine paper, Reynolds parchment paper (seperated from the toner
nicely but lots of broken traces), and the backing for Avery labels.

I'm thinking maybe because the iron is so much smaller than the PCB
I'm making that I am not getting a continuous enough heat transfer.
Anyone tried modifying a waffle iron to do the transfer with?

Thanks.