Yahoo Groups archive

Homebrew PCBs

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

Message

Re: [Homebrew_PCBs] various inkjet printing.

2006-08-07 by Stefan Trethan

I really get the hang of this inkjet printing business now.
Found the clothes iron upside down will work to cure the boards, as long  
as i give it time to settle (burned one board with the initial overshoot).
High time to make an oven, but the puny toaster ovens are not nearly fast  
enough for a SMD profile. Haven't quite figured out what to do in that  
regard yet.
I was kinda hoping someone is going to make a temperature controller with  
the atmega-8 so that i don't have to bother designing a circuit, looks  
like that's not happening and i'll have to roll my own (without micro!).

One thing though, while i can do "normal" PCBs easily (8mil or even 6mil  
no problem) i can't seem to get quite as good results as Volkan. he seems  
to have lines below 4mil that come out allright during etching. This may  
simply be because he uses FeCl, or because he uses another printer.  
Anyway, this is not worrying me because 4 or 6mil is quite enough for me.
I'm also not quite certain about the ink thickness - i must use the  
highest setting, he said he uses the lowest setting. I made another test  
PCB with all the settings and again it came out that only the highest  
works. Maybe it is because he is using several color heads - the sum of  
those may be as much as my single head on a higher setting. I will try  
this once i own more colors.

BTW, Volkan, how do you get the blasted ink off the PCBs?
That's tough stuff! The only way i could find so far is scrubbing with an  
abrasive pad. Any suggestions?
Acetone won't do it once the ink is cured, and i don't particularly want  
to use a solvent that makes me grow another head.

ST

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.