Hi folks!
I'm a happy man! See the pictures of the first sucessfully through
hole plated PCB on the page!
http://www.myhome.ch/mzingg/pcbstuff/tps/Click on "updates to the station", then scroll to the bottom.
Note! The "black" areas are not at all black. These are just
reflections of the light in my office. It's VERY hard to make a good
picture of such a shiny object like a freshly through plated PCB! The
scratches you see on one side are also not related to the through hole
process. They were in the print before the process. (That is I made
them after drilling the holes to get rid of the material that was
arond the borders of the holes).
The success came by adding two power diodes in series to the cathode
line thereby rasing the voltage by ~3V. This has something to do with
the triac dimmer I'm using. As a consequence I will - insted of using
a ready built one - build my own. I intend to make the station as easy
to copy as possible. I now start to document the station so as those
intrested in building their own don't have to go through such a lot of
difficulties as I had. That said I will add two new sections to the
menue. First one will be "Chemistry" where I will list in detail what
I know about the chemistry I use. The second section will be
instructions, picutres, dimensions, bill of material etc. so as one
can build his own station.
Markus