Homebrew PCBs

Mike Putnam wrote:
...
 >>go for $5 or give-away on ebay while lasers cost a lot more.
 >
 > Russell,
 > Where are you finding these $5 and give away printers on E-Bay? I have been
 > looking for a cheap one to tear apart and try the inkjet straight to a PCB
 > idea that was on this list earlier.

Enter: epson stylus
into the ebay search box. For ebay.com.au, the first hit is a stylus C20SX
for $5 with 3 hours to go.

http://search.ebay.com.au/search/search.dll?MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com.au%2Fws%2F

http://www.sold.com.au
Stylus 460 for $1: http://au.list.sold.yahoo.com/au/23416-category-leaf.html

Past auctions (may need to be logged in):
Stylus C41UX for AUS$67: http://au.page.sold.yahoo.com/au/auction/512163531?aucview=closed
Stylus 480 for $7.50: http://au.page.sold.yahoo.com/au/auction/512025039?aucview=closed
Stylus 660 for $15.50: http://au.page.sold.yahoo.com/au/auction/512025038?aucview=closed
Stylus 680 for AUS$43: http://au.page.sold.yahoo.com/au/auction/511961776?aucview=closed

The market is flooded with cheap printers, motherboards, monitors, and old (but still fast) PCs.

Beware that with the inkjet method, the proper ink and transparency *will* cost more
than the printer.

 > With a laser printer, I have gone down to 7 mil track and spacing. I have
 > never needed to go smaller than this on traces and it works fine. I have
 > never had to deal with breaks or shorts from a laser print. There is some
 > distortion on larger boards near the end of the print, but if you print in
 > the same direction from both transparencies, the distortion is not usually
 > noticable from side to side. The distrtion is also not enough to cause a
 > problem with parts distance or alignment/size. Any distortion that is a
 > problem is fixed easily in Acrobat distiller. Like Hans said, you do not
 > need total blackness. The trick is to get all the traces and pads the same
 > color, whatever shade of black or grey that may be. If it is consistent,
 > then it is all a matter of your exposure distance, time and light source.
 > Best regards,
 > -Mike