Homebrew PCBs

This is remarkably useful!  I've often wanted to rework flex cables, but it
had never occurred to me that there was a viable homebrew way of doing this.


Let us know how your results look if you repeat with printed traces and
heated FeCL.

-Andrew

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 5:15 PM, javaguy11111 <javaguy11111@...>wrote:

>
>
> A quick check of the archives did not show that anyone had tried this, so I
> will relay this little test I just did.
>
> I was thinking about making a flex ribbon for a small lcd display I bought.
> I decided to do a quick test with some copper foil tape and 1 mil kapton
> tape.
> I laminated the sticky sides of the copper tape and kapton tape together.
> Since I was doing a quick and lazy test, I just used a permanent marker to
> create some linear traces like you would see on a regular ribbon connector.
> Again, because I was doing a very quick test, I etched the traces in ferric
> chloride that I did not bother to heat, though I did use the bubbler.
> After about 15 minutes, the copper was etched away sufficiently. The trace
> quality was low, because of the quick and dirty nature of this test, however
> the traces were bonded to the kapton tape and were continuous.
> I was surprised to see that the adhesive on the kapton was still effective
> in the areas where the copper was etched away as well.
> With this test, I am confident that this method would be viable for
> creating custom flex circuit connectors.
>


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