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

Hi,

I tried to peel off the copper at one side of a glassfiber pcb.
I used a knife to separate the first layer of glass (with the copper)
from the rest, at the edge, and then peeled.

It is a bit tedious but it is possible to do it.
You must be careful not to let the edges break.
I think it might help to bash the edges with a hammer, to break up the
bond, and later cut off 5mm, but i haven't tried.

You end up with a (slightly thinner) single sided pcb and a very thin, very
nice, flexible pcb.

The surface has the "glassfiber matt" structure of course, which looks
quite nice but is not useable for TT of component legend, which is the
reason why i won't use that method. The grain is so course you can't
really get the transfer stick, and the toner is squeezed into the
low areas, which makes it unreadable.

Peeling the copper alone doesn't work well, it just breaks into smaller
flakes which can't be removed at all.

The only other method to use i can think of is etching the copper.
I would have liked to find another way because it uses a lot of etchant,
and
a lot of time, covering the one side and all.

Until now i just made the transfer on one side, and had both sides etched
at once,
the unwanted one simply completely. the downside of that is i can't
transfer
the component legend before etching. It takes longer, and is much harder
to align.
I would like to do the "simple" PCBs (one layer, and component legend on
top) with
one transfer run.

Well, let me know if you have found a better way.

ST