Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

Last night I got all geared up to start making PCB #5 - my first
double-sider. As with many possibly short-lived hobbies, I'm trying to
do this with a minimum of capital outlay using whatever's lying around
(no matter how inappropriate).

The gloss paper I have works well when it works, but it's 4x6 photo
stuff, quite thick and with a nice curl on it that will often jam in
the printer if I don't bend it just right prior to feeding it in.
Also, the ancient HP 5MP is running low on toner and is a bit light on
the left hand side (which is where the photo paper travels,
naturally). (And, yes the 5MP does have a more-or-less flat paper path
mode, which I am using)

So last night after three jams in a row, I decided to tape the paper
into the centre of an A4 sheet (just tape the leading edge). This
appeared to work well, despite going in slightly crooked and the
mysterious disappearance of the "0" width dimension lines - which I
didn't even notice at first.

Skipping the details, what I later discovered (after ironing and
soaking one side, but fortunately before any drilling or etching), is
that the whole output was vertically shrunk - presumably the extra
drag of all that thickness (but other possibilities are: I've wrecked
the whole feed mechanism with my tinkering, or that this was a one-off
caused by the paper going in crooked). I would have thought that the
80gsm paper plus, oh, 200gsm card would have been just within the
abilities of the printer, but maybe not.

So, to conclude:

∗ Has anyone successfully stuck thick card in the middle of normal
paper?
∗ If not - watch out overyone! If this wasn't a DS board, I would have
never noticed until solder time
∗ Are folks using thinner, larger gloss paper? Is that abundant? (What
I like about the 4x6 is that I don't waste so much)

Any other thoughts appreciated

PG