Homebrew PCBs

Hi John 

>HI Markus,
>
>That looks like a very impressive setup. 
>Very neat.

Thanks for the flowers. 

>Will you share the details with us, so that we can do the same?

Yes of course. I meanwhile created a better page. It was 3:30 am when
I put the pictures online :-)

It's still the same link though

http://www.myhome.ch/mzingg/pcbstuff/tps/

>How did you join the plastic compartments?

compartments? You mean the tanks? If so, they are actually made of so
called "hobby glass". I just cutted a stipe of 25 x 60 cm, then bent
it into a "U" shape using a hot air gun. The sides then were weldered
with this hot air gun also. Please forigve me, english is not my
native language, the above terms merly form a word by word translation
from german. That said I would apreciate if you correct me here if
needed.

>What will happen if a joint leaks at night (or day) and chemicals 
>leak out into the electronics?

The main plastic box is acid save. It's big enough so as THREE tanks
could leak at the same time before the level would even reach the
electronics. To save time (I really need some PCB's now) I decided to
NOT seal the frame cells at this point in time. If time permits I may
add this but the chance that three tanks leak at the same time is IMHO
not that big.

>How do you initiate the plating onto the non conductive pcb surface 
>(hole walls)?

I use mostly redy made chemicals from a german company called bungard.
They also sell a plating through station and I somehow copied some
ideas from there. It's much bigger though and also much more exensive.
However, Bungard sells a chemicals starter kit for this station (which
also is having 5 baths) for EUR 645.- Yikes, that's expensive, but it
last a while. Actually it allows to completely fill my machine four
times. According to results of a friend of mine a load is enough for
almost a year, so I think considering this it's not that expensive.
While we are at it. The machine of course also was not "free". I did
spent more money than needed cause I had to figure out solutions to a
wide range of problems and therefore bought stuff I ended up not
using, had to redo things etc. I think if someone builds a station
acording to the info found on the pages he can save a lot of money AND
TIME. I invested ~100 hours up to now.

Markus

>John M...
>======================
>
>
>--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, Markus Zingg <m.zingg@n...> 
>wrote:
>> Hello to everyone.
>> 
>> It's done! For those interested, here's the link showing the first
>> pictures of my homebrew through plating station.
>> 
>> http://www.myhome.ch/mzingg/pcbstuff/tps/
>> 
>> Enjoy!
>> 
>> The station is not ready to be filled with the chemicals etc. after
>> which the frist test can be made.
>> 
>> Markus
>
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