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

Interesting weekend of board building. I had a number of boards to
make with some rather fine traces (well, fine to me - .010 with .010
spacing). So, I decided to use the pulsar toner transfer paper rather
than ink jet or magazine pages. What a mistake that was! I went
through 5 sheets of pulsar paper and never got a good transfer. I
printed out the layout on my HP Glossy inkjet paper and had 8 good
transfers in a row - double sided at that! I give up on the "good"
paper and will stick with the cheap stuff - magazine pages and glossy
ink jet paper when I have some.

I tried the Liquid Tin product this weekend. Made by MG Chemicals and
can be purchased from Allied Electronics. It's a bit expensive, about
$30.00 for a bottle - have no idea how many boards can be tinned with
it. So far I have gotten 8 boards, that's all I know so far for life;-)

VERY easy to do. Pour chemical in flat tray, put PCB in for 3 to 5
minutes, take board out, rinse and your done. Put the chemical back
in it's bottle for the next use. Much easier than the solder paste I
was using and looks a bunch better too - thanks for that tip Robert!

Chris