Homebrew PCBs

Hi Suske,

I obviousely don't care too much from where you get the chemistry as 
long as it hopefully works out well for you :-). In other words, I 
apreciate the service Bungard is providing and as such wish them a 
looong life. Apart from this I'm not related to them in any ways. :-)

For the heaters, I use just dirt cheap regular aquarim heaters. The only 
thing to watch out here is that they usually don't go up to the 
temperature you need. However, they are (usually, check with what's 
available at your place) built using bimetal switches to switch the 
power on and off. The ones I found here (really the very cheapest ones, 
I use 100W heaters) have inside a little plastic part that sits on a 
fine threaded screw which is what you turn from outside to set the 
temperature. That plastic part is having a nose to limit the "hottest" 
end position. By simply cutting of that nose you can modify the heaters 
so as they go up to the requiered 75 degree celsius. There is usually no 
problem or security issue involved here apart from the obivous safety 
handling of such heaters. The heaters are made for such temperatures. 
Those for the aquarium are just limitted so as the average aquarium user 
does not end up unintentionally boiling the fishes.... :-) Just make 
sure you never turn the heaters on if they are not COMPLETELY flodded in 
the fluid or else the surrounding glass will instantly break.

As far as the anodes go I think the phosphor is important to get good 
results. I bougth my material from a source here in Switzerland 
(Haeuselmann Metalle) which is carrying different alloys of copper. One 
of them is having a small percentage of phosphor in it. So you may shop 
around a little up until you find such a source. If you have found an 
alternative source for the chemistry - why not ask them for a pointer to 
annodes? Professionals use copper nuggets in titanium containers which 
are then flodded in the copper solution and at least those must be 
available near you if there are also board houses since this is what 
they use. As a last straw, you could use such nuggets, melt them and 
found anodes this way. I of course also could buy you the raw material 
here at the 1:1 costs of what I pay. However, shipping the ~2KG of 
material might be a bit costly but feel free to get back to me if that's 
what you want.

HTH

Markus

_bojan_ schrieb:
>
> Hi Markus,
>
> Thanks a lot for your writing.
>
> Another detail ar fluid heating. Bungard use PTFE plated large area
> heaters. What did you use for fluids heating in tanks?
>
> What about anodes, can I use some copper plate or I must use that
> sulphurised copper.
>
> B.T.W. I am on the way to get my chemicals but not from Bungard. ;)
>
> Best regards,
>
> Suske
>
>