I don't know a whole lot about lasers, so forgive my ignorance. Is
there another type of laser than CO2 that will work for this purpose?
These CO2 lasers seem mostly to be for engraving whereas just cutting
through a very thin layer of paint wouldn't seem to require so much
power, especially since the time isn't critical. I have a cnc mill
that I'd like to mount a laser on, but I'd really prefer a small
solid state laser if possible.
Mark
At 09:00 AM 12/29/2010, you wrote:
>We've been using the paint method to do boards for a few months now,
>and it's been working pretty well. If you need top-notch detail,
>then you need to go with a photoresist solution. 10mil/10mil is
>pretty easy to do repeatably.
>
>The key thing to remember that the laser is about 8mil wide. This
>will affect the width of the traces and isolation that you lay out,
>because you'd end up with less and more, respectively.
>
>We have noticed the re-adhesion behavior mentioned below, but if you
>reduce the paint to the minimum needed for coverage, the amount of
>airborne burnt-off paint will be correspondingly reduced. Burning
>from the far side of the board probably couldn't hurt. We clean
>lasered boards gently with IPA and a cotton ball before etching.
>
>We've gone from bare copper clad board to etched-undrilled in about
>30 minutes with fresh etchant (FeCl). Assuming that you have access
>to a laser printer, the ease+cost can't be beat (you might be able
>to do cheaper by hand-drawing or plotting with a resist pen
>though). But you won't be running two traces in between
>0.1"-centered holes either, so there's still a place for photoresist
>in the world.
>
>We haven't done any soldermasking, but if you find something that
>works well for you, let us all know.
>
>-eric
>
>
>
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