Homebrew PCBs

photoplotter...or imagesetter...using a UV diode because many of them 
use a red LED. Jon Elson ha a website where he shows a home made 
photoplotter and wrote his own software, quite an amazing design for 
home applications. During last NAMES he showed me his PCB made using 
this method on his own photoplotter and it is stunning razor sharp. 
Jon uses a red LED and a red sensitive coating material but ther is 
no technical problem to change it to UV if somone had good reason for 
it. Like Stefan said, preparing the PCB for IR snesitive material 
takes time and skill but the cost benefits are enormous. Using 
Stefan's example I acquired a shoebox of PCBs and now it costs me 
pennies on a dolalr to make them sensitive. If only Jon agreed to 
sell his design of a photoplotter in form of plans... I saw him 
writing on a Gecko group... What we need for this hobby is a 
photoplotter. My adventure in getting a commercial unit to work is so 
troublesome and expensive that I would rather build one from scratch 
than going thru it again. Mike

--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, Stefan Trethan 
<stefan_trethan@g...> wrote:
> On Sun, 09 May 2004 20:47:01 -0400, DJHaCK <djhack@a...> wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > it's not really related but would it work to replace the printer 
head
> > with a UV laser and "print" on a
> > uv-sensitive pcb , a bit like how laser printer work except 
without a
> > spinning mirror involved
> >
> 
> You are talking about a "photoplotter".
> They are commercially available.
> The probem is you would need to exchage all electronics.
> 
> I think it is not exactly the easiest approach as it involves 
coating with 
> resist
> and developing, which makes it highly questionable if it is simpler 
than 
> TT.
> of course the quality can be very good.
> 
> ST