Homebrew PCBs

How this is done depends on a number of factors. The easiest way is to
just put some wire through the holes and solder it on the top and
bottom layer. Aside of the obvious advantage of simpleness and
cheapness, this method is having some disadvantages like:

- much work
- restrictions on where such vias can reside (i.e. you can't put them
under an SMD part etc.

Variants of the above method exist in that you can have finished wires
(don't know the exact english term for this) which you can insert with
a tool, but the soldering and the placement restrictions are the same.

Real through hole plating must be done using a through hole plating
station which consist of several tanks holding chemicals. The PCB then
must be delved into them, moved within them back an forth (so as the
fluids can flow through the holes). The last step is then a copper
bath where an electrolytic process is applied.

I'm right now in the process of building my own through plating
station - it's an ugly whole lot of work, but I too got sick of either
waiting for others to make my PCB's for my money or having
restricitons mentioned with the above method.

One of the bigger obstacles when it comes to through hole plating
(IMHO of course) is getting the right chemicals. There is much
experience in there and the companies who produce such chemicals of
course treate them as a big secret. I too had to bit the bullet and
buy finished mixtures. I bought them from Bungard which is a germany
based firm. In the end I will have my own through hole plating station
with 5 tanks which puts me in the position of creating even multilayer
boards.

If the people on this list are interested I will post a link once the
station is finished so as others may can use it as a starting point
for their own constrtuction. I'm pretty far already, that is if all
goes well I may even finish it this weekend.

HTH

Markus

>Hi everyone,
>
>I’m new here, I’ve been working with PCB’s for a while and now I want to
>start making my own boards for a great number of reasons.
>I found enought info on the net and in this group archive files to know how
>to make them double sided with many details.
>But I couldn’t find almost a thing about how to make the component holes
>conductive (metalized holes).
>Can anyone give me a help with this?
>
>Thank you
>
>Nuno T.
>
>
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