I made a long skinny one sided PCB today with the help of the glowforge. The board was only 1/2" wide but 10" long. I covered the copper clad board with Kapton tape, placed it in the GF, did a really light cut thru the tape and then weeded it where I wanted it to etch. Here is one being etched.
That is downright amazing!!!
I’ve GOT to get a bench back up and running. Glowforge and Arduino are simply made for each other.
As a person with a near fetish for colored light FX, I need some more details!
Even if you don’t use this for etching circuitboard traces, there’s always etching brass… or electroplating…
I am prototyping an ultra thin durable light panel to be used on stage, This one is using lights i had, They are 2812 chips, RGB and each one is addressable. This panel is 16x16 leds, I used the fastLED library for arduino and just used one of there demos. It draws nearly 150 watts.
Have you thought about the NeoPixel matrices from adafruit.com? It will save you the work of making the boards and soldering, plus they’re flexible too.
I did, Their bigger ones aren’t bright enough and the 8x8 is too rich for my blood:-). But I love adafruit.
And I just like to make things! Surely you get that
Yeah, I have a string that’s supposedly 4 LEDs per unit that’s not blinding at all…
That Kapton thing is great! Now I am thinking about a board I’ve been wanting to etch for a while.
Oh yeah I totally get that… it’s the running joke any time I see something in the store… “Oh I can make that… but do I want it right now or in 3 weeks?” 
Guess they’re using different LEDs in them. I have some NeoPixel strips and they’re blinding.
So pretty! 
Very cool.
Nice work. Does Kapton tape cut cleanly? I tried with a blue laser diode and it made a charred mess.
it was a little gummy but pretty good, Think a little more power would have helped
I know this post is from long ago, but I just happened across it. Very cool Tom, making the masking for etching like that. And being able to solder it up with no wires from strip to strip, excellent! Have you experimented any further with PCB masking involving the GF?
Thanks! I have done a little for simple thing but not much, for the most part I just order from OSHpark 
Ha fair enough. They do make good boards and make it pretty easy.
