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

I really get the hang of this inkjet printing business now.
Found the clothes iron upside down will work to cure the boards, as long
as i give it time to settle (burned one board with the initial overshoot).
High time to make an oven, but the puny toaster ovens are not nearly fast
enough for a SMD profile. Haven't quite figured out what to do in that
regard yet.
I was kinda hoping someone is going to make a temperature controller with
the atmega-8 so that i don't have to bother designing a circuit, looks
like that's not happening and i'll have to roll my own (without micro!).

One thing though, while i can do "normal" PCBs easily (8mil or even 6mil
no problem) i can't seem to get quite as good results as Volkan. he seems
to have lines below 4mil that come out allright during etching. This may
simply be because he uses FeCl, or because he uses another printer.
Anyway, this is not worrying me because 4 or 6mil is quite enough for me.
I'm also not quite certain about the ink thickness - i must use the
highest setting, he said he uses the lowest setting. I made another test
PCB with all the settings and again it came out that only the highest
works. Maybe it is because he is using several color heads - the sum of
those may be as much as my single head on a higher setting. I will try
this once i own more colors.

BTW, Volkan, how do you get the blasted ink off the PCBs?
That's tough stuff! The only way i could find so far is scrubbing with an
abrasive pad. Any suggestions?
Acetone won't do it once the ink is cured, and i don't particularly want
to use a solvent that makes me grow another head.

ST