Yahoo Groups archive

Homebrew PCBs

Index last updated: 2026-04-28 23:05 UTC

Message

Thoughts on where I went wrong? (1st pcb attempt)

2002-12-31 by ghidera2000 <ghidera2000@yahoo.com>

Just attempted my first photofabrication and it failed at the 
developing stage. Within 30 seconds of immersion the board was 
completely devoid of resist...

Here's what I did (all M.G. Chemicals supplies)

-Printed out my circuit onto a transparency (IBM Laser 
Transparencies, 24L5041) using a Samsung ML-1210 laser printer.
-Poured two litres of hot tap water into a tray.
-Poured 200ml of Developer into the tray of water (10:1 as per 
instructions).
-Set up the UV light using the supplied stands (about 5-6" high).
-Placed the sensitized board blue side up. Positioned my 
transparency (ink side toward the board) and placed the plexi weight 
on top.
- Waited 5 minutes then turned out the light (actually probably more 
like 5.5 minutes).
- Immediately put the board into the developer solution. I used the 
supplies foam brush to agitate the water (didn't come within 1/2" of 
the board itself, just slowly waved it back and forth at the 
surface). Solution was about 95-100F by this time.
- About 5 seconds in I could see my traces through the clouds of 
black ink. As the black ink cleared I could see traces starting to 
fade out too. This is about 15 seconds into the process. I realized 
the board was already toast so I waited to see how long it would 
take to completely erase the resist - was about 30 seconds.

The instructions say it should take about 2 minutes to develop the 
board. This was a LOT faster... I'm thinking perhaps the developer 
was too strong? What about temperature? Should I just use developer 
at room temperature instead - give myself more "OOOOP" time?

I guess its also possible that this laser's toner isn't UV opaque 
but, the speed at which the board completely blanked and the fact 
that I saw traces - even for a short time, makes me think its a 
developer problem.

What do you guru's think?

Attachments

Move to quarantaine

This moves the raw source file on disk only. The archive index is not changed automatically, so you still need to run a manual refresh afterward.