so, then I give the board the final trimming and drill the holes on the drillpress.
While everything is still warm, I'm going to try to make a real-time full-length video of it. not sure if my camera will do that.
should take 8-12 minutes for the whole pcb process.
haha OMG thats terrible alignment.
When this IS dialed in properly, I can do double sided boards with it. but I almost never bother.
applying silk screen...
hah, I'm gonna try a silkscreen... I usually skip this step.
actually, its pretty good. yay for using new etchant.
what am I at, 5000 posts on how I do this now?
I swear, this is trivial...
ugh...
ding dong, the witch is dead. It might look ok here, but you cant really tell until you clean the resist off.
ok, more waiting.
If I'd done a pcb in the last month, this would go really fast.
cmon, warm up...
oh damnit. I mixed the wrong one, there wasn't enough persulphate in there to get a proper etch, I have to remix and start again.... oh I was not supposed to do that...
I cant get the ammonium persulphate anymore.
Look what I found to use for a rinse tank!
I threw in the PCB, its held by a slot and STAINLESS steel screw
oh oh ohoh I can explain.
Thats my file server, the idea was to have it able to read as many media types as I could.
If I need to read a floppy, thats the machine.
ok, agitating bubbles, check, heater, check... wait for it to warm up...
I choose C, it seems I just *just enough* ammonium persulphate left to mix this up...
:S I think these have a bit of life left in them, but when faced with this A or B decision?...
OK, new tank, this is not what I want and it cost too much, and, its all thats available!
ah yes, good point.
I could paint up a board.
it was hackadays comment on my comment on that post that I'm doing all this for, when I have everything woken up from its 1000 year sleep, I'll do a real-time video of a board from start to finish and youtube it.
it goes really fast when its been used recently.
{ Rue runs to store to try to buy new tank }
oof, the etching tank is getting scary too... WAY more UV damage than I'm conformable with.... :S
ok, as far as success goes, this step is equally important to get a good PCB. good etchant! so, what was a better year, 2017 or 2020? :S
I have the cupric chloride too, but I KNOW its not right.
ok, not bad for an old pen. I do not believe in hand touch-ups, but I might not get better out of these pens today. (I need new @STAEDTLERNA pens, they are the best for this)
I touched it up and masked the edges (I do an edge ground plane)
THIS IS THE NERVE RACKING BIT.
will the pen fall out? will it dry up? will the plotter screw up?
If this goes wrong, I can just wash the board off with acetone and start again. This is 4x more successful and faster than toner transfer (not as high resolution tho)
ugh, now I need to find a working resist pen, these are a pain if I dont have a pen less than a year old (these are all way older)
ok, cut to size (based on the test print) Oxides scoured off (with superfine steel wool) and cleaned (windex and acetone) **no fingerprints allowed**
no, todays piece of clad comes from the 'pcb' box, here is some I've already stripped one side off.
"No Rue, no ordering from Aisler and @JLCPCB until you have used the PCB's we have at home."
The PCBs at home:
And here we go, this is a test print. While it finishes this print, I'll post this video.
(oh, yea, I put the pen in the wrong bay, my bad)
work that pen, work it, work it hard.
(oh, and the spooler system is working now)
Well theres yer problem...
Wrong baud rate on the dos parallel port capture device...
(dos cant do 115200 and I dont like tieing up the computer to spool a print slowly.)
er, ok, good 'nuff for now. I'll run a pen exercise first.
The plotter runs on parallel, which is captured from the dos machine by the file server, then spooled to the plotter by *that* computer.
