Ok, today I did my first PCB. It tuen out pretty good. I though it
would be a little bit more complicated. I follow most people advice
and drilled at after the etching procees. The hole in the pads did
worked as a guide plus it was eaier to drill because there is no
copper there.
Before I did the etching I was at a dilema. I found out that my
pads where too small. My options where to enlarge the pads with a
Sharpie or redo the drawing. I only have 3 PnP sheets left. So after
a little bit of search I found a website that saud you can use staple
photo paper.
http://www.fullnet.com/u/tomg/gooteepc.htm Now I tried using this process on another blank PCB. I dodn't know
but I can't make it work. I can transfer some of the toner but a lot
of the traces did not stick. I did this process at least 5 times
maybe more. The results where not satifactory for me. I would like to
hear from somebody about this because at staples you can get 200
sheets for $30. That is cheap. On the other hand if I cant make it
work then is no good to me. Here is what I did
I made the print out on the glossy side. I preheated the copper
board then I put the printout. I but a black piece of paper on top of
the printout because the photo paper sticks to the iron.I Iron that
thing left and right and any which way possible aplying various
pressures. When I was done I ran it under cold water then I gave it a
hot water bath. Now the hot water was not boiling just as hot as I
could get it from the faucet. I tried peeling the paper off and only
a few traces stuck.
In the end I just filled in the pads with a Sharpie in my board
that I did using the PnP paper. It only took me 3 tries to get the
PnP to work right. The first one it did not stick too well. The
second one was a an aligment problem. or maybe it was a mirror
problem. Unless someone can tell me whats wrong with the photo paper
technique I'm sticking with the PnP even though is expensive.