On Tue, 10 Mar 2009 05:15:07 -0000, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
> I just bought some release paper and green foil from pulsarprofx.com. Well, actually from Digikey, but it's the same stuff. In his instrux, the guy specifically warns against the use of Brother printers. It's not the first time I've heard this. He says that Brother uses a unique high-temperature toner that just will not fuse to circuit boards.
Check to see if mouser has it cheaper. I use an HP, not sure that the
color toner is not higher temperature. No brother, though....
>
> I have a Brother 8860DN multifunction printer. It's a fairly new, high-end machine. Does 1200DPI, duplex, etc etc. Importantly for our stuff, it does mirror-imaging.
>
> I've done several double-sided boards with the Brother. I've gotten traces to work as small as 15-mil.
>
> On the latest board, it didn't quite make it - this was a surface mount board with a 64-pin QFP, requiring lots of 10-mil traces. Four of them broke while I was ever-so-gently scrubbing the paper off.
>
QFP with 0.5 mm spacing? interesting.
> But that's not the sort of failure I read about with the Brothers: I read about wholesale failure of toner to transfer at all, which is definitely not the case here. I wonder if Brother "saw the light" and made their toner a bit milder WRT temperature?
No idea.
>
> Digging through the web, I found this pulsarprofx guy who says that his paper "just floats off", and his foil will stop etchant from going through the toner. Sounds good to me. I'll be trying it tomorrow. With the Brother.
>
Well, he's mostly right. If you read the instructions, they recommend
a laminator, 0.032 board, their products, etc....
the paper ∗does∗ just float off. If you allow it to cool completely,
then it may pop off on its own. I don't know if it leaves the toner
on the paper or behind. I try to reheat it and go from there.
Oddly enough, the one board that I printed on the backside of the
paper (by accident) did not do badly at all.
> The paper is fairly pricy, at $14 for 10 sheets. On the web site, he says it's covered with "dextrin", which as far as I can tell, is starch. Wonder if one could make paper like that by spraying the ordinary stuff with starch solution? I can probably stretch this stuff to where it's not an issue by cutting small pieces for my board printouts.
make sure that it fits the laser printer, and that your laser printer
does not do stupid things to make the drawing fit.
>
> If the Brother won't play, I also have an HP 1020, which I keep loaded with MICR toner for printing checks. But I still have the original cartridge somewhere, with all of one sheet printed on it.
>The HP only does 600DPI, and something they call "FAS1200". I guess that's short for "Fake 1200" :). And the driver doesn't do mirror printing. It's the original driver from when I bought the printer - at least four years ago. I see there's a newer driver dated 2007. Anybody know if that one does mirror print?
Nope, I use Eagle (pause for boos and hisses) and that has a mirror
print capability. For DS boards, I recommend feeding the sheet in the
same way each time and varying the position of the printout on the
paper. Highest toner density is recommended as well.
Harvey
>
> - Jerry Kaidor
>