Homebrew PCBs

On Tue, 19 Sep 2006 05:58:49 +0200, jam5411 <mardock@...> wrote:

> in the photos section under JMBoard Images is a photo of my first
> successful Inkjet PC Board! Well yes I am thrilled... This board has
> good runs to 6 mil. 5 and 4 mill would have been OK but the runs broke
> at the pad. Not sure but I attribute this to puddling on the pad and
> the surface tension of the puddle tugging on the ink at the attaching
> run, causing it to thin there.

Yes, i still have similar problems. I am not sure why, but it seems i must  
put on much more ink than Volkan. My guess is that the difference might be  
he uses all heads and i use only black, but i'm not sure.
Did you use the correct colors in the heads or all filled with yellow?

> Quite a lot of work to get there for me. Took three different C84's
> have found that once the heads are plugged, on some, they are REALLY
> plugged. Soaked them in Steves potion for several weeks and still no
> luck, and in fact am still soaking them. All of them had plugged
> vacuum pump lines if not from the head port to the port support stand
> then from the port support stand through the pump to the "sponge" or
> both! The printer I used for this board still has banding in the black
> cartridge. I programmed Dip Trace for a muddy brown which uses the
> three color cartridges CMY when I did this board.

Hm, mine cleared surprisingly well with steve's cleaner. I just soaked the  
pad so it's full and parked the head there a while. But i guess there must  
be heads that are too far gone.

> I stripped one of the printers down to the chassis cut the chassis
> above the feed roller as Stephan suggested, set the whole frame up
> about .185" (4.7mm)using PC board spacers and a 4-40 jack screw on the
> frame left side.

That was a good idea, it was kinda tricky to get the height right on the  
left for me.

> Curing the MIS ink is as Stephan said critical. Amazing, the wifes
> kitchen oven (Jennair) has a digital temperature display. Checked it
> with the pyrometer, not only was it 20 F low it had a +-25-30 F spread
> above and below the set point, which is all the digital display turned
> out to be - a display of set point :). Still I used it to cure this
> board because I could play with the temp control as the board was
> "cured" to regulate the temp. So the next project is to modify the
> toaster oven for curing/reflow.

Yes, when you have burnt the first board because of the poor control  
you'll want that toaster...

I'll need to do more boards this week.

ST