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

Hi all,

Been a silent member for a while. Just picked up an old HP 6L laser
printer to start my project. Glad I read up on the laser printer
process first in this group, as I made the guy put in a toner
cartridge that actually printed out dark black not gray as the first
one did. Score one for the group!

The project is an electric truck. It has 104 12v batterys. It needs a
bit of overvoltage regulation to prevent it from toasting 104 $60
batterys. So that means the potential of making 104 pcb's plus spares.
It's fairly simple with all the parts on just one side, and smt at that.

It looks like since I originally joined, that using a heat press for
doing badges and such has become quite helpful. Not sure what you call
the machine. I will look into that as well. I planned on using just a
standard teflon coated clothes iron to press the toner to the pcb. But
after printing out the pcb's in a 4 pcb x 5 pcb pattern, it occured to
me that the 12 mil traces are too narrow for this type of pcb
manufacturing. The pcb is about 2.3 x 2.8 or so. So far 20 of them fit
on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet. Seems that the rolling press might pay for
itself over 104+ pcb's. More research. Any brands that stand out? At
this point I'll take any tips you guys have.

Thanks,

Mike