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

Hi,

Yesterday, I tried my first PCB. I used Pulsar's "Fab-in-a-Box" system with their GBC "Personal" laminator. After following Pulsar's directions, some traces just floated off after soaking to remove the backing paper. First, parts of the board outline (5 mil) drifted away, followed by some of the traces (10 mil) and pads. Can anyone here tell me what I did wrong and how to fix it?

In more detail, I printed their Toner Transfer Paper with a new HP 1005 printer, using the HP demo catridge. I set the density to 5 (max) before printing. The print looked ok. Could the HP demo cartridge be different (cheaper maybe) than the regular HP cartridge? I let it sit around for maybe 30 minutes before laminating, while cutting and cleaning the board. Could that be it?

I cleaned the board, by Pulsar's recommendation, with, first, a little dish soap on a green "scrubby" then with Tarn-X using a paper towel pad, rinsing thorougly after each. I wore latex gloves to avoid fingerprinting my clean board. Could my problem be in cleaning the board? Is there a better method?

I ran the board and TTP through the laminator twice--forward and backward, per instructions. One discrepancy is that I didn't have the water bath immediately at hand and it took about a minute to get some water. Could the board have cooled enough in one minute to cause my problem? Also, I left it in the water several minutes rather than one. Is soaking too long a troublemaker?

I note that the worst of the problem was at the back end of the board (relative to my first pass), though there was some toner floating off in the middle, too. Does the laminator (which I let warm up over 30 min) lose its heat so quickly that it doesn't do a 4" long board evenly? Would more passes through the laminator help?

Any other problems with my method that could cause this failure?

Thanks,
Jim