Homebrew PCBs

The biggest problem, IMHO, with doing surface-mounts by hand is aligning 
the pins with their corresponding pads.  The Schmartboard line of 
prototyping boards solves this problem by putting pads between ridges. 
With an arrangement like that, you can't help but have the pins rest right 
on their pads.  Driving home tonight, I thought how wonderful it could be 
if one could put similar ridges onto homemade (or pro-made) PCBs.  I came 
up with two approaches:

1) Spread a photoresist over the board about .2mm thick.  Mask as 
appropriate to harden the resist where you want Schmartboard ridges.

2) This one came later after more thinking.  Come up with a liquid resin 
that is repelled by metal and attracted to photoresist, bare epoxy, and 
bare phenolic.  Spray it over the whole board.  Resin will bead up between 
pads creating ridges for surface-mount pins to snuggle against.

When I came up with #2, I quickly discarded #1 as too convoluted.  Can I 
get your ideas on this?  Would it work?  Would you use it?  Who would we 
talk to about mixing some of this stuff up?

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi@...

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