First, some photos:
http://www.delorie.com/pcb/lab/I wanted to try this in case I needed it in the future, and this board
was simple enough that it didn't matter if it worked or not. Got to
remember to avoid the thin bits of mask between pads, though - they
easily come loose.
The discovery is about laminating 1/16" (63 mil) clad. Usually my
laminator doesn't like accepting these, I have to push pretty hard to
get it to "catch" and roll through. This time, I was trying to avoid
air bubbles in the mask. Usually I wrap the film around the leading
edge of the board, and hold the trailing edge tight, so that air
bubbles won't get trapped. In this case, I didn't quite have enough
film (it was a scrap) so I put the pcb on a piece of paper, leaving
most of the paper on the leading edge side, and taped the film over it
(taped it to the paper, not the pcb). That way, the laminator could
grab the paper and I had time to pick up the trailing edge of the film
and hold it while the laminator pulled in the paper/film/pcb.
I was expecting problems when the pcb got to the rollers, but it got
drawn in just as smoothly as the paper! There was a bump when it
exited, but the lamination was nearly perfect. So I'm thinking, when
you do 1/16 clad, leave enough of the TT/film/whatever paper on the
leading edge that you can fold it over enough to tuck under the pcb's
edge, so that the laminator can grab the fold and draw the PCB in.
Anyway, back to the mask... after developing, I put it under the UV
again for 3x my normal exposure to harden it. Any idea how it will
hold up to soldering? It's Riston.