Homebrew PCBs

KD5NWA wrote:

> There are lots of laminators out there that are worthless. The H200 works 
> so good because it heats the roller, many cheap ones have a heater and then 
> it's pressed by cold rollers.
> 
> I bought mine two years ago for $99 but about a week ago I searched again 
> to check the price and see if it's still available and I found it on the 
> Internet for $97 so look around you should be able to buy it for less that 
> $100.
> 
> At 07:57 PM 6/3/2005, you wrote:
> 


   This was GBC as well and heats the rollers, just low end GBC.

   Time to heat up is an ok rough indicator for what it can do, heating up 
rollers in 4 minutes is not bad on the Xerox, I doubt the good GBC does 
significantly better.  Takes much more heating element to warm it up fast than 
you need running for normal laminating usually so it's not cost effective.  And 
then copper board sucks far more heat than most materials being laminated.

   Fuser is ready in 18 seconds.  While it deals with a similar small thermal 
mass for normal printing, it has a very high heating ability so you don't have 
to wait even a minute to print.  It'll easily cook the board if you leave it 
full on.  Probably destroy itself eventually too.

   Without rebuilding your laminator's electronics you still can't have full 
control.  Even slowing it down etc only lets you control the temperature profile 
a little.  If I want complete control to really test out the transfer 
temperature envelope I may as well skip buying and rebuilding the electronics of 
a laminator and just do the electronics and use a fuser, no more work and I have 
the fusers laying around.

   Wouldn't suggest it for everyone but it makes sense for what I want to do. 
Or at least as much sense as it can, considering it won't make much sense for 
other reasons.  Time involved vs the fact that I'll have money coming in soon 
from an unrelated project means that soon I should probably never even make a 
board by these methods again, just send and way a few days and overlap working 
on something else..  But I'll screw with it anyway, the fuser from the 6L is 
cool and I want to make it burn the heck out of a board now that I see it. 
Should do other stuff, but I know I'll do this one since it looks fun.

Alan