Hi Steve,
Agreed, I don't think toner itself will work as a soldermask. The
idea is if you vinyl cut a solder paste sheet, then one can spray some
kind of temporary solution (latex?), remove the solder paste sheet and
then spray the actual solder mask material.
Even though it might need an oven bake to cure, the temporary stuff
sprayed before the soldermask should lift off the pads, so voila
you're left with a soldermask on traces but nothing on pads.
Would you be willing to try something like this? I don't have access
to a vinyl cutter at the moment.
--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <alienrelics@...> wrote:
>
> I have thought about what might work. Perhaps a sheet of mylar stuck
> onto some removable vinyl as a carrier. I had some around here, it's
> relatively thick, not the thin overhead transparency stuff.
>
> I seem to recall some others here saying they don't remove the toner
> or ink, just solder right through it. So based on that, I'd think
> neither would work as a soldermask.
>
> Steve Greenfield
>
> --- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "iluvpcbs" <iluvpcbs@> wrote:
> >
> > Steve,1
> >
> > Could you try and make a solder paste stencil using your vinyl cutter
> > sometime to see if my idea might have any merit?
> >
> > I agree that spraying coatings and stuff is a lot of work, but the UV
> > setup has, well setup time too.
> >
> > My other idea was to use toner as a soldermask block and then remove
> > that later with acetone, but I don't know if the under cutting on that
> > would work.
> >
> > I have yet to hear from any of the direct-inkjet-print guys if they
> > ever got a soldermask printed.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> >
>