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

YES .... I agree that buying good tools will produce consistent results.....
BUT
not everyone can afford the best tools
and when it comes to these laminators....... I question the need to spend $100 on the heavy duty one.

I successfully used the $18 AL9 to transfer toner.
I wouldn't know if it would last a long time.
I wanted to figure out how to hack an $18 laminator.... just to prove it could be done.

My goal in documenting any of this home brew PCB stuff is to show the kids...scouts...newbies
and THEIR PARENTS
that hobby electronics does not mean IPHONE APPs and ARDUINO SHEILDs
And that nothing special.... like FERRIC chloride .... is required......
because  you can get peroxide and muriactic acid to etch a board that costs 50 cents from EBAY.

I would bet that any kid that learns any this has a better chance of a technical career in the future
compared to the kid that learns nothing more than how to play POKEMON.

 

 

Well, there's only so much you can do with the plastic 'disposable' type laminators.
I run my laminators around 340F almost every day, no complaints and certainly, no breakdowns. One pass  and several boards at a time some times.

The laminator mod I made has been running 2 years now...and has saved me quite a few man hours by producing repeatable,  accurate double sided transfers down to 10 mil, especially for RF/UHF capable boards where irregular traces (as per iron on) would cause problems with parasitics.

I am from the school of buying good tools once after learning buying cheap = buying twice with headaches included.

Leaves more time to make rather than fix.

cheers.