Homebrew PCBs

Good point about speed of pen-up and -down. Oops, you're
Kleinbauer. I know a Nachbauer who makes Theremins, hence my
mistake.

I did try a Staedler 313 (Red) pen, just discovered I already had
one. I was etching some boards I'd made with a vinyl cutter and so
I drew onto a bare area with the Staedler 313 and some permanent
pens, the kind they sell at Radio Shack remarked as "Etch Resist".
IE, laundry marking pens.

My acid (Ammonium Persulfate(sp?)) was weak so it took a long time
to etch. The laundry marking pen started out with a few breaks, and
ended up pretty bad. The Staedler 313 was nearly perfect. That was
just me drawing it, I'd expect better from a plotter moving the pen
at a more constant speed.

The vinyl cutter? I drew it in CorelDraw and cut it out of vinyl
sign plastic and stuck it to the board. I didn't do nice traces, it
was done as large areas of copper isolated by thin etched strips.
This was at the limits of small size of the cutter and the vinyl.

Steve Greenfield

--- crankorgan <john@...> wrote:
> Steve,
>       Don't take the plotter apart until you look at:
> 
> http://www.qsl.net/ve2emm/pcb/pcbe.html
> 
> 
>        Also, hooking up a Dremel or other tool to a Plotter
> has a drawback. Pen-up and pen-down signals are too fast. If
> you use a dashpot to slow the solenoid, the X Y will start moving
> before the Dremel is down all the way. A plotter can make really
> nice boards. It is possible to gut a plotter and drive it using
> GCode files. Then using the Z axis movement you can get the
> timing
> right.
> 
>                                                John


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