Homebrew PCBs

Not to hijack this thread (which has wandered away from the original 
post...and onto RTV silicon impregnated papers and direct-to-copper 
printing)...but to address the original posters question:

Yes, laser transparency sheets work great for TT.  I have used the 3M 
brand.  I personally was never able to get any of these papers (or 
glossy magazine pages) to work for me using TT.  Of course, I never 
bought a laminator...so I was probably not using an even enough heat 
distribution with my naive clothes iron based approach.

But I will testify that viewgraph transparencies worked GREAT.  The 
transparency just peels off...and leaves ALL the toner behind. The 
etched traces looked pretty good. 

I stopped using this technique for completely unrelated reasons.  It 
should work well for others. 

I did have to be a little careful about ironing the board TOO long. 
Because then the toner would smear a little. I am guessing the toner 
doesn't really bind that well to the plastic, versus paper.

Jim

P.S.  BTW, I have stopped using TT, myself.  I am putting together a 
small mill to mill isolation traces.  The reason I want to do things 
this way...is that I am just a hardware hacker. I build my designs a 
susbsystem at a time...and so...I need to be able to continue adding 
traces onto an existing populated board.  That's a little hard to do 
using ANY chemical milling technique.  (The parts would be destroyed 
by the wet chemistry involved.)

Yes, I want to use PCBs even for one-off experimental projects.  It 
seems like too cool a way to go - to not try it out

--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "matt clement" 
<buckeyes1997@y...> wrote:
>
> I was wondering if people use the toner transfer method with the 
clear 
> laser print transparency sheets??  I like the ability to see through 
> the film for ligning up dual layer boards with a few key drill holes 
> for alignment.  Simply line up the holes with the pads on the clear 
> sheet and iron on.  I have tried it with copier transparency sheets 
> and got okay results but never tried the laser printer sheets.  My 
> guess is they can take much higher heat than the ones for copiers.  
I 
> wondered if one sheet could be cleaned with Acetone and reused a few 
> times??
> 
> Anyone have any thoughts or comments?
>