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

Well, it is maybe hard to admit but i am a stupid git.

Toner transfer works MUCH better if you use the right side of the paper ;-)
.


Somehow on my first test i must have determined the coated side of the
paper wrong.
I printed on the normal paper back side...


Today in bright daylight i saw, more by good luck than on purpose, that the
paper sides have different colors.
one is brighter, the other is slightly yellow.

I thought the bright side must be for printing on then, and then i tried to
remeber if this was the side
i used in my first test after purchasing the paper.


I couldn't be sure that i used the paper right so i decided to do another
test.

The new toner i bought on ebay (original HP) is on its shipping way by now,
i still used the old rebuilt one i had.

Also i wanted to use the laminator, (fuser assembly from copier), but
couldn't get myself
to hook it up and adjust the temperature so i used the old clothes iron
once again.


I just printed on the paper (right side this time), then put it on the
fresh cleaned pcb (thinner to remove toner from previous experiments,
finest sand paper, alcohol last cleaning to remove dust and oils)

and pressed the hot iron on it. i kept a constant, not too hard pressure
for ~30 seconds,
then started to rotate the iron on the pcb (back and forth, my hand doesn't
support 380°)
, keeping pressure all the time for another 30 seconds.

after that i put the hot pcb (with pliers) in a plastic container with a
solution of warm water, dish cleaning detergent and some NaOH (leftover of
the last toner transfer experiment).
Because the pcb was hot the paper immediately got soaked with water
(probably the last time
also the coating on the upper side preventet soaking).

After only a minute i started to rub and peel and discovered a perfect
result.

On one spot i was too eager and scratched the toner off with the finger
nail but the
rest is just amazing!


The image is sharp, no pinholes etc.

Looks just like printed directly on the pcb.



You see - this was a pretty fast experiment (maybe 10 minutes) and it was a
success.
I didn't care much, didn't expect it to work and it prooved me wrong.



I discovered that my current toner leaves pinholes if i don't set to
darkest.
This is not really a problem and the genuine toner is known to be better.



For now this is enough text to read, i will stop it here with a very
important thing:

THANKS EVERYONE FOR HELPING!


At the weekend i will make some pcbs which are in the queue for some time
already.
Maybe there will be scans then in the photo section.

kind regards

Stefan