etch's archive
Posted in December 22nd, 2011
We’re kind of surprised we haven’t covered this concept before since it only uses techniques that are commonly avaialable for home PCB fabrication. [Ray] made this solder paste stencil out of a sheet of copper using the same etching techniques you would for a circuit board. He designed and printed a resist pattern, with toner [...]
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Posted in November 25th, 2011
When [Adr1an] wrote in to share a link to his PCB etching tutorial he mentioned that he knew we had already covered a ton of these guides. He’s absolutely right, not only have we featured a great number of them, but we also wrote our own quite a while ago. But that doesn’t mean we [...]
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Posted in March 18th, 2011
Printing PCBs using the toner transfer method works pretty well, but there are some downsides, such as incomplete trace transfers and the like. HackHut user [rucalgary] decided to go the inkjet route instead, and picked up an Epson printer on clearance at his local electronics shop. This method is not new by any means, but [...]
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Posted in February 17th, 2011
[James] came up with a way to make small numbers of high-contrast instrument panels cheaply, and without too much labor. We’ll make with the bad news right away; you’re going to need a laser cutter to use this method. Traditionally, panels that look like the one above are etched onto special composite that has one [...]
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Posted in January 31st, 2011
What if there were only two steps for making your own printed circuit board; print, etch? That’s what [Jeff Gough] has been working on and he presented the process in his talk at 27C3. In the first portion of the video after the break [Jeff] talks about various industrial PCB manufacturing processes in a depth [...]
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Posted in January 22nd, 2011
What do you get when you mix a simple X/Y plotter, a Flyback transformer, and an unhealthy disregard for safety? Possibly the worlds most dangerous jumbo Etch a Sketch! [Kalboon] started off by making an imprecise X/Y movement device, similar to a CNC machine setup, but with less emphasis on precision. This rig is powered [...]
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Posted in November 14th, 2010
[Rhys Goodwin] has been working on a system to print resist onto copper clad using an inkjet printer. This is a toner transfer alternative as it still uses toner, just not quite as you’d expect. The first step is to modify an inkjet printer, separating the carriage from the feed rollers in order to increase [...]
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Posted in August 17th, 2010
[James] has been refining a method of negatively etching metal with a laser. He had been using a product called Thermark which is designed for this process, but it’s quite expensive. He found that paint designed for wood stoves works just as well. To prepare the surface he bead blasted it and then cleaned of [...]
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Posted in July 12th, 2010
Who would have thought that some corn starch could be made into toner transfer paper? We’re not sure of the advantages (perhaps its cheaper?), but if you have a lot of time or just love to get sticky [Matthew Sager] shows the proper method for making the paper, printing, and then etching a PCB. If [...]
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Posted in May 7th, 2010
[Tanjent] send us a link to his tutorial on the toner transfer process for fabricating circuit boards. We’ve seen a lot of these in the past, but we liked how his is straight to the point while also sharing several tips and options along the way. Notably, he ”tints” the copper clad before trying to [...]
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Posted in March 31st, 2010
Tired of every printed circuit board you etch coming out brown? Take a page out of [Dane's] book and dye your PCB to just about any color you want. One hour submerged in a 200 degree bath of Rit dye turned his brown FR4 substrate to the desired dark green. We give him points for [...]
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Posted in January 27th, 2010
[Bart] built a giant laser etcher from scratch. One of his first test engravings included the Hackaday skull-and-wrenches on a polished granite floor tile (we love it when people do that). He used an XMOS controller and Mach3 CNC software to handle the device. With just two axes to worry about this seem like an [...]
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Posted in November 23rd, 2009
[Jonathan Ward's] pcb mill is as impressive as it is inexpensive. Twenty-six plywood parts, labeled A-Z, are used to assemble the machine along with the customary precision rods, stepper motors, and router assembly. His bill of materials prices the unit at $458.18, a small price to pay in order to forgo a multi-step etching process.
His [...]
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Posted in August 20th, 2009
This clever Instructable demonstrates how to etch beautiful aluminum control panels for electronics projects. We like how similar this process is to DIY circuit board etching. Both abide by the same technique and use blue transfer paper. The primary difference is in the use of muriatic acid and hydrogen peroxide for etching aluminum.
[...]
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Posted in August 13th, 2009
by
admin in
circuit,
circuitboard,
copper,
dowel,
etch,
etchedpcb,
fecl,
ferric chloride,
iron,
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rss,
toner,
tool hacks,
transfer,
tutorial
Pulsar Professional FX has a neat tip on their site for getting a really even toner transfer when making your own PCBs. First, the PCB is cut to size, and the paper is tacked to the board. Then, the PCB is placed paper up onto a dowel and rolled back and forth with the iron. [...]
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Posted in July 14th, 2009
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admin in
circuit,
circuitboard,
copper,
etch,
etchedpcb,
fecl,
ferric chloride,
pcb,
peripherals hacks,
rss,
sponge,
tool hacks,
tutorial
Etching a printed circuit board generally takes a bit of time and uses a lot of etchant. [TechShopJim] posted a method that uses a sponge to reduce the amount of etchant used while speeding up the entire process. First, a resist is applied using either a sharpie or the toner transfer method. Using gloves to [...]
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