Absolutely none is a strong statement.
I would say there is a number of good reasons why it does not work.
The toner is transferred from the drum to the paper via an
electrostatic charge delivered by the corona wire. A metallic PCB
shorts this charge, making the transfer efficiency ~50% (pure chance)
which is usually not enought to work as resist.
The drum is coated with a very delicate photoconductor. This layer is
easily damaged by board edges, metal burrs, accidents of any kind.
The only approach that sounded promising to me was presented by
someone who is no longer a member here. It involved installing a
silicone rubber coated drum right under the photo drum (in contact
with it). Below the silicone drum a heated PCB would pick up the
toner. This transfer drum would solve both problems.
Don't get me wrong i'm very supportive of any efforts towards direct
laser printing, i think it would be very neat. But you have not yet
identified all the problems.
ST
On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 1:30 PM, Mark Lerman <mlerman@...> wrote:
> For anyone interested, there is absolutely no reason that laser
> printers cannot directly deposit toner on pcb boards.