Thread: Hello...
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03-12-2012 #7
"The Emperor protects"
Ordos Emperor returns Dune. Something to do with Dune? :-)
If you have some information on what you're building I'd be happy to take a look and give my opinion.
Thinking about it, if you're just doing simple single sided amp boards and have the luxury of a CNC machine this may be your best option. Having never milled a PCB I don't know :-)
Anyway the way I do it is this:
Print my design onto JetStar ink jet film using a Photo printer (a normal office one should work too). I used to use OHP transparencies printed on a laser printer but they warp too much to get accurate or precise results.
Next I expose the PCB in my "light box", which at the moment is 4 T5 fluorescent tube holders fitted with UV (NOT UVC!) tube screwed to a piece of ply with a sheet of glass from a photo frame supported above it on two blocks of wood. I just stick a book on top to hold things in place and cover it with anything to hand so I don't get damaged by the UV :-)
Next I develop the board in a sodium hydroxide free developer. Developing with caustic soda/sodium hydroxide gives very bad results.
I then wash the board and etch it in ferric chloride, an old ice cream tub is potentially useful here.
After that I sometimes throw in immersion tin plating and a solder resist layer using a similar artwork to film, UV exposure and development process.
The results i get with this process are good, fine detail can be realised (I don't know how small a detail can be milled but I'd guess it's far less). The chemicals are a pain to get rid of though, they need to be disposed of properly.
Now that I've written (mostly) all of it down it does seem like a lot of hassle :-)
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