Yes! Please make this a separate post. I’d love to see more about etching PCBs.
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Need some help here… Is the creating of PCBs (with a laser) for proto-typing, small scale production or proof of concept for laser creating PCBs?
I have seen several references about lasering PCBs, but not much explanation as to what someone would do with them? Raspberry Pi? Arduino?
Thanks for any help.
From what I have referenced from making ones own circuit boards after using software like Eagle PCB design by Cadsoft ,to name one, it helps with layout and modificatin of the board then can be imported in to a laser system to remove the conductive material to build and test prototype boards or maybe now make replacement boards in simple devices. Food for thought maybe but since it the conductive material is most often a copper coat either a cermark or paper mask would be recommended. I have also learned that the active ingredient in Cermark is the same as CRC moly drylube spray and if I recall DM-90 for etching stainless steel.
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If you already etch your own PCBs (probably in very small quantity for prototypes or small-scale production) then being able to zap away the resist removes a bunch of steps from the workflow. Usually you make a mask, align that with the PCB (sometimes transfer it physically), expose the masked PCB to UV(?) light to fix the resist, then wash away the unfixed resist and etch. This effectively reduces the process to zap and etch.
It would be nice if a gf could also drill, but nuh-uh. (Although now I wonder: if you made pads-to-be-drilled with little holes through the copper in the center, could you punch a laser though that if your alignment were good enough? And would it be worth the trouble?)
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Yes definitely if it works as you would no longer need a precision drill press and it takes a long time to drill lots of holes if you do it manually.
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Based on my experience with 1.5kw & 3.5kw CO2 metal lasers when cutting acrylic, PC, and anything reflective (Brass) we would always cover the surface with 3M Green Masking Tape. With the brass’ high reflectivity we would either cover it in tape, or utilize a proprietary misted on compound to reduce reflection back into the focusing lense, or elsewhere into the cutting chamber can be catastrophic (A rookie operator wasn’t paying attention and had the beam reflect off of brass on the 3.5kw Bystronic and it damaged/burnt/deformed the special laser radiation filtering windows, thankfully they did their job).
My experience is that with etching you want a shorter focal length (which yields a cleaner tighter, more energy rich focus (wattage per mm^2)), and you want that focus @ surface height or a fraction of a mm beneath surface. Although I’m not sure we’ll be able to manually specify cutting parameters (power, focus, feed rate, accel, decel, pierce time, lead in accel etc).
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I see a toner transfer paper as a way to get designs onto PCBs. Can you get boards covered in resist already? I’m missing something here.
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/pulsar/50-1101/182-1003-ND/3386
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Yes.
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Digikey has the presensitized board too, albeit a touch more expensive, I think. But with the laser method you wouldn’t need the photosensitive resist, just a thin clean layer of anything that could act as resist: ink, paint, varnish, whatever…
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Right. But the question above was, ‘Can you get boards covered in resist already?’
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That helped. “Sensitized” is how it’s listed on Digi-Key. Very hard to figure out there. Thanks!
https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=mg%20chemicals%20603
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This dropped in price overnight by a couple bucks and I’m thinking of buying it to try it out, though I’m unsure of the last half of the process…removing the copper.
This tutorial makes it sound easy:
but I’ve been burned by a few Pinterest projects, so this article seems more realistic:
That last Instructable gives me great pause on pulling the trigger. I’d like to make a circuit board but my current plans are just to use a breadboard! Can anyone point me in the right direction that they know would work?!
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I have used Fritzing to create graphics to write up my projects. It has an option to export PCB from drag drop created breadboard layouts.
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I did one many moons ago using a method like this. You can get muriatic acid at your local hardware store. It turned out pretty good as far as I could tell, but life got in the way and I never got to finish that project. I tried to dig it out to share a photo, but no luck. I’ve got more time now, so my interest has been rekindled by playing around with an Arduino.
If you are trying to do it single sided in Fritzing, select your pcb in PCB view and change the “layers” property on the bottom-right to “one layer (single-sided).” Took me a while to figure that out.
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Almost 2 years later … would you buy that Alex unit again? Do you just put sheets of PG in there or how do you organize?
I’ve been wanting to get that Alex for a year now…wanting an opinion. I have a lot of IKEA furniture in the house but fiance’ wants to know it will handle having all that wood or acrylic in it.
Thanks!