Good Looking boards!
Congrats...
I have to make some boards in the next few days and will give it a try
with the C84/MS-PRO combo and hope I have the same fortune. I have
been playing with reducing the volume of the ink by evaporating some
of its liquid, leaving more solids to be applied. I have to admit that
I am moving slowly as I do not want to plug the head. However that
being said I have noticed an improvement as I take the volume down.
Have reduced volume by 5% so far. Hopefully with your new added step I
will not have to take my tests further!
John
>
> I have completed a test board which I took pictures of and posted in
> the photos section under C88 Test PCB. I think the biggest step to
> getting a good ink transfer was preheating the PCB before printing. I
> used a small heat gun my wife uses for stamping. I warmed it up to
> about 75C. With the heating I did not get any pooling of the ink
> which I had before. I believe Stephan was saying he had pooling too.
> I think this must allow some of the ink to dry before more is put on
> top. What time of the year was Volkan printing maybe the boards were
> warmer to start with (summer)? Printing in black but with all carts
> magenta (EPSON TO603)works great. I get a very good layer of ink.
> After etching the ink still looks the same. It will not come off with
> a casual wipe with acetone but will mostly come off with continued
> scrubing with acetone. The curing is almost the same as Stephans. I
> am giving it a little more heat 240C to 245C and a little more time 5
> minutes than I did in the photos. I have given it up to 20 minutes
> of time and it still worked fine but the epoxy was getting very
> brown. All the traces were very good with no breaks down to what
> Eagle says is .001 in. on the PCB. I'm not sure if the Epson is
> really printing that small as it is hard to measure. The photos are
> not as good as I would have liked but the light meter was not working
> in the camera and it was hard to get good light on the board when the
> macro lens was so close. I beleive that this is a very good start for
> me and I will have pictures of completed boards in the future. I will
> also post some pictures of the printer but it is very much like
> Stephans. The C88 appears to be the same as as a C84
>