Homebrew PCBs

Check out www.laserpcb.com

We make copper foils laminated to kapton that you can put through an unmodified laser printer and directly deposit the toner onto the copper.  The laminate has a pressure-sensitive adhesive to allow you to stick it to the supplied FR4 board before etching.

Dave


--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, Mark Lerman <mlerman@...> wrote:
>
> For anyone interested, there is absolutely no reason that laser 
> printers cannot directly deposit toner on pcb boards. The practical 
> problems are the fuser and the paper path. As a proof of concept, I 
> took a Brother HL2140 laser printer that has a manual feed for 
> thicker media and fed a sheet of thin (8 mil) laminate through the 
> printer. Nothing printed.
> 
> I then removed the fuser, using appropriate resistors to simulate the 
> correct fuser temperature and thereby fool the printer controller 
> into thinking the fuser was still there. I ran the same test, and 
> sure enough, it printed perfectly! Of course, the toner was only held 
> to the board by electrostatic attraction, but I then put the board 
> into my trusty toaster oven and "fused" it.
> 
> There are other practical problems, but these can be overcome with a 
> little bit of work. A small mcu will be needed to simulate some of 
> the feed sensors and the paper path will have to be changed, but my 
> experiments show that these are (relatively) easily done.
> 
> I have used a datalogger to check the function of the three main 
> sensors - paper feed, start print (rear register) and eject - and can 
> simulate all of these and I have actually run the printer using an 
> mcu instead of the sensors. However, the real problem is that the 
> machine is not rugged enough to handle a lot of manipulation - the 
> connectors break down easily and you end up with error lights that 
> you have no idea how to fix, a tiny slip that causes a momentary 
> short will sometimes blow a board, etc.
> 
> If anyone is interested in more details, I am happy to share.
> 
> Mark
>