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

Mike Putnam wrote:
...

>>go for $5 or give-away on ebay while lasers cost a lot more.
>
> Russell,
> Where are you finding these $5 and give away printers on E-Bay? I have been
> looking for a cheap one to tear apart and try the inkjet straight to a PCB
> idea that was on this list earlier.

Enter: epson stylus
into the ebay search box. For ebay.com.au, the first hit is a stylus C20SX
for $5 with 3 hours to go.

http://search.ebay.com.au/search/search.dll?MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com.au%2Fws%2F

http://www.sold.com.au
Stylus 460 for $1: http://au.list.sold.yahoo.com/au/23416-category-leaf.html

Past auctions (may need to be logged in):
Stylus C41UX for AUS$67: http://au.page.sold.yahoo.com/au/auction/512163531?aucview=closed
Stylus 480 for $7.50: http://au.page.sold.yahoo.com/au/auction/512025039?aucview=closed
Stylus 660 for $15.50: http://au.page.sold.yahoo.com/au/auction/512025038?aucview=closed
Stylus 680 for AUS$43: http://au.page.sold.yahoo.com/au/auction/511961776?aucview=closed

The market is flooded with cheap printers, motherboards, monitors, and old (but still fast) PCs.

Beware that with the inkjet method, the proper ink and transparency ∗will∗ cost more
than the printer.

> With a laser printer, I have gone down to 7 mil track and spacing. I have
> never needed to go smaller than this on traces and it works fine. I have
> never had to deal with breaks or shorts from a laser print. There is some
> distortion on larger boards near the end of the print, but if you print in
> the same direction from both transparencies, the distortion is not usually
> noticable from side to side. The distrtion is also not enough to cause a
> problem with parts distance or alignment/size. Any distortion that is a
> problem is fixed easily in Acrobat distiller. Like Hans said, you do not
> need total blackness. The trick is to get all the traces and pads the same
> color, whatever shade of black or grey that may be. If it is consistent,
> then it is all a matter of your exposure distance, time and light source.
> Best regards,
> -Mike