Re: Inkjet printing on PCB for layout?

From: Eric Snyder (eas90168_at_aol.com)
Date: 08/24/04 

Date: 24 Aug 2004 14:21:51 -0700

Hello Ethan;

Here is a follow up on my original post. I make a mirror image of the
circuit so I can lay the transparency ink side down. This eliminates
the thickness of the transperancy becoming a factor in the PCB trace
quality. I can produce traces as thin as .33mm using this technique.
I like the laser printer method as described earlier and that is
probably best. As you know, ink jet printer ink runs if it gets wet,
ruining the template. Unfortunately, I dont have a laser printer,
just a cheap Lexmark. Be sure to set your printer to the maximum DPI
available. If not enough ink is used for the traces, some UV light
could bleed through. I don't know if laser printers will have this
problem.

Eric N7DLV

Ethan@757.org (Ethan) wrote in message news:<ba51dd5.0408240635.5f52042b@posting.google.com>...
> > No one bothers to use plotters or other such systems any more, don't
> > bother, it's not worth the hassle.
> > I use a laser printer directly on transparency film and then expose a
> > positive pre-coated photoresist PCB. I can do 6thou/6thou double sided
> > surface mount boards if I'm careful, and 8thou/8thou (0.2mm) with no
> > trouble at all.
> > Quality will depend on the transparency you use though.
> >
> > Dave :)
>
> Interesting... I should look into this, my main beef with the iron on
> toner transfers was that it was alot of work to remove the toner
> transfer stuff from the PCBs, and the time to iron was hard to
> predict, so it would be cool to have the capability to do more
> accurate stuff, to allow surface mount work.
>
> I like the idea of a pen plotter, but the photo methood sounds pretty
> easy.
>
> I've heard of people stacking two transparencies....
>
> I'm definitly going to look into the photo method!

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