[Noisebridge-discuss] Do we have PCB etching equipment?

[Jake]

I have etched circuitboards many times myself, and I still have a lot of 
the prototypes I made.. complex boards with a hundred parts.

The way i've always done it is with glossy inkjet paper, in a laser 
printer.  The laser printer deposits toner, which is basically just 
plastic dust, onto the glossy surface, and melts it on there with its 
fusor.  The next step is to lay the glossy side down to a cleaned and 
prepared copper-clad circuitboard, and iron it on.  There are a few 
details to the technique to get it to work well, and I would love to 
demonstrate these techniques.

Also I have learned that you can pretty much use any glossy magazine page 
and it works just as well as the inkjet paper.  It's amazing.

Of course, after ironing on the image from the glossy paper, the paper is 
washed off and then you use ferric chloride to dissolve the copper.

I can say authoritatively that you can re-use ferric chloride as many 
times as you want, because the copper that saturates it will just 
precipitate to the bottom of the container and not bother you.  Extremely 
well-used ferric chloride will etch slower though, but it still works.

It helps to warm up the FeCl to get it to work faster.  Also, i can tell 
you that it is totally safe to get it on your skin, in your hair, in your 
eyes nose and mouth.  I know this because one time I tripped while 
carrying a gallon of warm FeCl and fell on the container, which shattered 
and went all over me and in all my faceholes.

so, who wants to etch a board?

-jake

P.S. don't put a comma at the end of your link, as you had below.

mct wrote:

See also https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Homebrew_PCB which we did 2
years ago at 83c.  (I still have the board we made, and keep meaning to do
something with it -- like put a frame around it and stick it up on a wall
at 2169, or whatever...)

There are many downsides to this technique -- including the fact that I
still have a whole bunch of copper-rich, spent PCB etchant in a bottle
under my bathroom sink at home that I have no idea how to properly dispose
of.  There's a higher learning curve for using the MaxNC, but it has many
advantages.

If you *really* want to do this, I have unused etchant left, which you
can talk to me about.

-mct