Homebrew PCBs

I did this once to make a double sided board. I etched both sides on
separate thin board (but I'm not exactly sure of the board thickness), then
glued the 2 boards together copper out on both sides with epoxy. I aligned
the 2 boards together just using a light, and let the epoxy cure a bit
before I actually stuck them together so it wasn't as gooey. It worked out
well, considering the design I was making was a commercial design meant to
be sent off to a boardhouse, but I figured I'd give it a go myself. The via
holes were extremely small, I used the finest drill I had (surplus carbide
pcb drills), and 30 gauge wire wrap wire just barely fit into those holes.
The alignment was almost perfect on the via holes, which was surprising as I
couldn't see the other traces that well through the board. I didn't drill
any alignment holes first, and just drilled everything once the epoxy cured.

For this project anyways, which was a fairly small board (maybe 1.5"
square), the resulting board was very stiff!

Andrew

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 9:31 AM, Peter Harrison
<peter.harrison@...>wrote:

>
>
>
> On 7 Jun 2011, at 14:02, Chris Kleeschulte wrote:
>
> > Question to the group:
> >
> > Is it feasible to use 2 one sided .032 boards and glue them together? Or
> > even created some sort of 4 sided PCB using glued .032 boards? For the
> > 4-sided boards the vias would need to be plated, but had anyone attempted
> > this?
> >
> > This would double the amount of holes you would need to drill out, but I
> try
> > to stay in the SMD world nowadays.
> >
> >
> > The challenge, it seems to me, would be the alignment of the via and part
> > holes.
>
> I was thinking of having a go at this. Assuming I could do both boards (for
> double sided) with the same accuracy, I intended to etch both then drill
> one. The second layer could have two or three holes carefully drilled and
> widely spaced. Then I would pin the two boards together through the matching
> holes in both. After that it should just be a case of drilling again through
> the existing holes in the first board.
>
> If the dimensions are god and the alignment holes really are, all the
> others should be perfectly lined up.
>
> To glue them together, I figured contact adhesive would do. Epoxy would
> squeeze up through the holes meaning they would need re-drilling again.
>
>  
>


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