Homebrew PCBs

Hi Everyone,

Chilliismyweakness: I used the following model:

GBC Creative Laminator

It is available from Dick Smith Electronics, catalogue number F1424, $40:

http://www.dse.com.au/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/488e64bf03cce6be2741c0a87f9c076c/Product/View/F1424

I've also seen it at an Australia Post Shop for ~$44.

I am pretty happy with the results I am getting from it. It works very
well with the Open Road paper, but doesn't seem to work at all with
the Press'n'Peel film. I don't think enough heat gets through the
thicker Press'n'Peel film to properly bond the toner to the board.
However, I can't see much need to use the more expensive film when the
Open Road is free and works just as well for me.

One of its virtues is that it can handle 1.6mm FR4 board without
modification. I think the rollers have some give (perhaps they are
spring loaded), and can therefore adapt to the board's thickness. I
found that feeding the board on a slight angle worked best, i.e. so
that one corner contacts with the rollers first. Feeding it in this
way, the board never got stuck. Feeding it in parallel to the rollers
occasionally caused the rollers to jam.

I still think it would be nice to modify the laminator at some point
so it can fuse boards in a single pass. I think these things use a low
speed AC motor running at a fixed speed. I think I might eventually
turf this motor, and put a little DC motor, gearbox and a speed
controller in its place. But that project is some time off - for the
moment I'll just stick to feeding the board through ~8 times or so.


Myc: Thanks for the tip vis Avery and Dennison labels. My first
thought was Kapton tape since I have a couple of rolls of the stuff
lying around and I can't even melt it with the tip of my soldering
iron. However, I'd does seem kind of wasteful and expensive to use
such 'fancy tape' for making PCBs. Will give the labels a go.

Cheers,

Luc