Hello Jerry - it's been several days since your post and I'm VERY interested in how the Brother worked with the release paper and green foil from Pulsarprofx.com. I also have the Brother 2140 laser printer and have used with it some success on TT.
I use a toaster oven set at 450F for about 10 minutes to be sure it's headed thru my aluminum clamp assembly. I had read on the Pulsarprofx the Brother would not wrok at all because it uses a hotter type toner. Are you using the OEM toner?
I'm a newbie here and am reading and learning.
Thanks to all for input.
ken H> K9FV
--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "jerrytr2.com" <jerry@...> 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.
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> 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.
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> I've done several double-sided boards with the Brother. I've gotten traces to work as small as 15-mil.
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> 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.
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> 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?
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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?
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> - Jerry Kaidor
>