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Subject: Re: [Homebrew_PCBs] UV LCD exposure

From: Leslie Newell <lesnewell@...>
Date: 2008-02-18

That one has occurred to me before. I even got as far as disassembling
an old black and white laptop to investigate. The biggest problem I can
see is the thickness of the glass. Unless you have extremely good
collimation of the light you will get severe undercutting.

Les

Dave Miller wrote:
> Does any one know if LCDs are transparent to UV? Would it be possible
> to replace the backlight on a LCD display (like a LCD computer monitor)
> and do a contact exposure to a sensitized PCB with the PCB image
> displayed on the LCD? A number of monitors have sufficient resolution
> to do fine traces if when the LCD is clear UV is transmitted and the UV
> is blocked when the LCD is dark (or visa versa if you have positive or
> negative resist).
> Having disassembled a LCD monitor it does not look like it would be too
> difficult to replace the cold cathode lamp with UV LEDs. (Unfortunately
> the LCD was cracked or I would have tried the experiment). This would
> eliminate the need for photo-plotting, printing on Velum, or overhead
> material. With a white light behind the LCD, you would get what you saw.
>