Custom PCB's

[Death_blooms]

Check out this neat tutorial on custom PCB boards

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm79uwwnY-0[/youtube]

[Reloadron]

Really interesting clip of etching a PCB. I like the way he includes the small graphics in the artwork.

Ron

[Jokerswild]

Thats interesting. I didn't even know that they made 15 thousands diameter solder. For those that don't know .015 Diameter is equilevent to about 5 human hairs.

[stinger608]

Originally Posted by Jokerswild

Thats interesting. I didn't even know that they made 15 thousands diameter solder. For those that don't know .015 Diameter is equilevent to about 5 human hairs.

Yep, Have some .015 silver solder for doing capacitors

[robodude666]

That method is too labor intensive. You can let the copper cad sit in the solution for a bit and you will get the same results.

[Death_blooms]

Originally Posted by robodude666

That method is too labor intensive. You can let the copper cad sit in the solution for a bit and you will get the same results.

yeh I don't no why he dose that? He could just dunk them. Still, good results.

[One4yu2c]

That was pretty damn interesting.

[Lokie]

Um I will get Twiz in on this one.....

[Twizted]

OK... The basic idea is this... When you submerge a copper clad board into Ferric Chloride also known as "Iron chloride hexahydrate; ferric trichloride hexahydrate" or FeCl3 6H2O it immediately starts to saturate with copper molecules which creates a surface tension.

Imagine if you will a car covered with dirt and you take it to one of those (touch free) car washes.... when you get through there you car it noticeably clean but there is if you look close, still dirt...

So even if you agitate the Ferric Chloride... It still is not efficient in breaking the surface tension unless you have some pretty high pressure setup which you will only find in mass production PCB manufacturing plants...

The main focus of this method is that while it is a bit more involved than a normal method it has benefits that out weigh the work... First of all it requires far less fluid because you don't have to fill a tank and for that matter, you don't have to buy a tank, heater, air pump ect.

mmmkay, I can hear you saying "but you don't need all that just let it set and move it around every once in a while... fair enough.. but.. Did you ever think about the copper you are exposing on the sides of your traces? what protects it? Fact is, nothing... it is exposed and etched away just like all the rest of it and if you do some pretty tight traces (which I have personally done traces so thin that I can fit two in between a set of IC pads thats about .006" for those who are counting) then you don't want that precious copper etched away...

Here is a little image I whipped up to illustrate my point...


Point is this method uses less material, is easy to clean up if you have a spill (I had a tank with 2 liters of Ferric Chloride and the tank cracked... not pretty), and is faster... The faster part of all this is the thing I like the best because it allows me to produce such fine clean lines.

So, That is why I do my boards that way now... BTW... I also have an expensive tank, heater, pump, hangers ect ect... I just find this easier with less work in the long run and having been fabricating my own circuit boards since early 2002 I can say I have tried a lot of differant methods.. I like this one ;)....

**EDIT**
BTW is it just me? When I posted the image it showed up in the posting block but when I submit it just turned into a URL... Whatha??

[Capper]

Pretty damned cool stuff