Reliable PCBs at home - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

25 Oct 1999

On Oct 24, 21:48, Marvin wrote:
...
  Richard Erlacher wrote: 
...
  > Has any of you ever encountered an approach to
this that could be managed in
...
  > the home environment with equipment costing,
nominally, less that a k-buck
...
  > or two and achieving nominally 10-mil traces with
8-10 mil separation or
...
  > anything close to that?  How about a dry-film
solder mask? 
...
  Doing the process at home can be done with a minimum
of equipment if service
...
  shops are used for parts of the process. A small
copper plating tank,
 tin-lead tank, and peroxide-sulfuric etchant along with fusing oil and flux
...
  can be set up at home for probably a couple hundred
dollars. To set up a
 fairly complete shop including drilling and imaging would probably cost
 between 2K and 3K. This would provide the capabilities of producing
 reasonably high quality boards. Oh, did I forget to mention getting the
 experience to know how to do it :)? 
I've never done the full process Marvin describes at home, but there's a
commercial website that has quite a lot of useful information.  Eniough to
encourag me to try it "one day":

    http://www.thinktink.com/

(If you're like me, and keep that Java(script) stuff turned off, turn it on
for this site, as the menus need it).

-- 

Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Dept. of Computer Science
						University of York