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

At a recent hamfest, I picked up (and not for much, so this was lucky)
a Wavemaster II and a Superfuser, both by Dynaart (eventually became
Pulsar).

Although I have not contacted Pulsar yet about these wonders, I do
have a few questions for anyone who has used them, and an observation
or so:

1) looks like the superfuser is very very slow, but will do one pass.
I've tried some PC board work with it so far, on 0.023 thick board,
and it seems to be happy. One pass seems to do it, but there might be
some edge issues, more later. I have the heat control set to about
3/4 of the maximum. Haven't tried the green foil yet. Anyone have
observations about this and also, has anyone tried thicker boards?

I used uncleaned copper to give it the best worst case test, anything
else ought to be better. The copier was a Canon all-in-one rather
than my normal HP 2200D. Another experiment.

2) I have the wavemaster II, a wave etchant tank that uses persulfate
(only) etchant. Any observations here? I have tried it out, but
without etchant. The wave tank seems to be a very good idea, but
while I'd love to use CUCL etchant (or peroxide/HCL) etchant, but I
hardly need it to be a wave tank if it's fresh, I think that the
stainless hardware (screws) and the aquarium pumps would never survive
the experience.

Which brings me to a secondary problem, there seems to be few people
selling sodium persulfate in the local (Orlando) area. make that
none.... Anybody have a good source of tech grade sodium persulfate?
I'd considered ammonium persulfate, but it is both deliquescent and
perhaps unavailable. The rough guess of the cost is about 3.50/lb,
and I'll need (I think) about 1 lb/gallon of water. $150.00 for 50
pounds is a bit excessive. We won't even discuss the lab or reagent
grade of this stuff....

3) observation, the old pulsar paper was white, and not blue. If you
allow it to cool too long, it absorbs water and buckles. The
superfuser is very slow, so you have to almost immediately dunk the
board into the water bath. On the other hand, it seems to be doing a
good job so far....

Harvey