Toluene is the main ingredient in your basic lacquer thinner, also sold as
straight up toluene for those DIYer;s, any hardware store w/ a paint dept
should have it, but beware. The VOC's are more volatile and brain killing
than acetone.
This is all very fresh in my mind, as I was just cleaning some sanding
sealer off a brush with it.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve" <alienrelics@...>
To: <Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 2:12 PM
Subject: [Homebrew_PCBs] Re: Toner Transfer with Toluene
> I would not base an assessment of toluene based on trying acetone. I
> have seen (and used) acetone as the suggested method to quickly remove
> toner from a board after etching. Your toner may look fuzzy because
> the acetone partly dissolved it.
>
> Hmmm... gonna have to Google. What is toluene and where would I find
> it? Maybe it is supposed to dissolve the coating on the inkjet paper
> while not dissolving the toner?
>
> Steve
>
> --- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "mikezcnc" <eemikez@c...> wrote:
> > I read about it and it uses an inkjet paper in Laser printer (and
> > then one places the paper ink-side down onto a clean copper board. At
> > that time one uses toluene on a cotton ball and gently massages the
> > toluene onto the paper which in turn transfers the toner to copper. I
> > couldn't resist but try this method but since I didn't have toluene I
> > tried the leftover acetone that just keeps oozing out of the can by
> > itself.... The results were interesting. Within seconds I got a nice
> > image trasferred, all of it and almost uniform. The quality of image
> > was poor because I used a very fine SMD image, to challenge the
> > method. It was fuzzy and unfocused and I wonder if that would be
> > enough to resist the etching...
> >
> > Has anybody tried with toluene? Maybe toluene behaves differently but
> > I personally doubt it. Thsi method was described somwhere in Europe
> > and they claimed it was a great method. I wonder if they tried it on
> > Power Supply board or RF... or never tried to etch it. From what I
> > see it appears to be another urban legend.
> >
> > Mike
>
>
>
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