Homebrew PCBs

Been lurking for a while and it's been years since I had Ferric Chloride 
stains on my fingers.

Just a thought or 2 on laminators.

Has anyone tried adapting a plain paper copier fuser roller? Widen the 
gap and slow it down, I don't see why it wouldn't work.

When I was repairing them 30 years ago a local Ham bought one of our 
scrap units for the purpose of using toner transfer onto blank boards. 
That was coated paper to transparency then fused to the Copper clad. 
Never laid eyes on it but later I did ask him about it. He changed out 
the adjustment bolts for longer ones to widen the gap between the 
rollers and upped the temp a bit. Silent Key now so exactly how he did 
it may be forever lost.

When I worked for HP in the late 1990s they were using Laserjets for 
direct printing onto prototype boards. They had the R&D department so I 
doubt that's something I could do in my basement with a vice grips and 
duck-tape...

Still, the modern low end dry toner printers use heat and pressure to 
fuse the toner and it seems to me that they could be used. The fuser 
drums (mostly) have an almost mirror polish and operate as high as 450F.

Just a suggestion, I have too many Irons in the fire as it is.

Tim Hills

In both cases the printers were modified
On 11/2/2011 22:09, Mike wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Just finished running a 0.062 double sided pc board with Techniks 
> Press and
> Peel toner transfer through the Harbor Freight Laminator, Model 92499. The
> toner was put on the Press and Peel using a copy machine at a big box
> store. After seven runs through the Laminator, the result was mixed at
> best.
>
> First, the circuit was not transfered evenly over the length of the board.
> Second there was a series of pin holes in the toner transfered to the 
> board
> - as if a roller in the Laminator is a diamond pattern (or whatever 
> this is
> called).
>
> Haven't opened up the Laminator to see what is inside. Anyone else getting
> any results using the Harbor Freight Laminator?
>
> -- 
> 73,
> Mike, K4GMH
>



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