I would be happy to do that for you, but I don't need to, because I
know already that it will not work. When the print is finished and the
bed cools down the PLA comes off, it only sticks while the bed is hot.
I print directly on aluminium, roughened up with scotch brite, like
you would prepare a toner transfer PCB.
Even the single layer trace that is printed at the start of a job
around the outside, to get things going, comes off way too easily to
survive any etching.
That is only the first problem. If you actually could get it to stick
there is also the problem that the first layer has a very poor
quality. It is not as dimensionally accurate as subsequent layers
because the bed/board is never perfectly level. Also I don't think the
line width is fine enough for PCBs, but that really depends on the
application.
Generally the bottom layer is not perfect, even with a good setup
there is a structure to it with tiny voids along the extruded beads.
This is an extremely bad example, but I have not seen a perfectly
smooth bottom surface:
<
https://umgallery.ultimaker.com/uploads/gallery/album_1778/gallery_39565_1778_136353.jpg>
So even if you can find a material or surface preparation that sticks,
I don't think this will ever work well. You have a greater chance with
fitting a plotter pen, but I've been there, tried that with a plotter,
it sucks.
ST
On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 10:00 PM, Brad Thompson
brad.thompson@... >
> Thank you for the pointer to the printer. If you have a few spare
> minutes, would it be possible for
> you to try printing PLA plastic as etchant resist on a piece of
> copperclad board and then reporting the results?
>
> Thanks, and 73--
>
> Brad AA1IP
>