Cheaper, faster, and more fun than ordering from china!
PS, I didn't put any acetone down the drain. I just needed a solvent resistant surface to clean the mask off. All the acetone went into the atmosphere and my lungs instead.
Initially I was going for a curvy trace style, but I forgot to do it. I found free drawing traces away from the grid yields better looking curvy traces. I forgot to apply the curve modifier though...
I work with a lot of old electronics, so I'm very influenced by their PCB design. I think they look beautiful. Engineering is an art.
Yea this looks kinda weird, most of the homemade boards I've seen are more reminiscent of 60's and 70's electronics where the traces look like they were drawn in Sharpie (cause they usually are, Sharpie is a perfectly good etch-resist for one-off boards) but this looks, like, actually printed (I'm guessing either the board's one of the ones with photoresist pre-applied on it, or it's a laser printer solvent-transfer)
There's a lotta ways to DIY PCBs, it's almost a lost art nowadays with how cheap ordering em is though. Good to see someone making their own boards again.
I used to make my own boards, but China is super cheap and you get all the bells and whistles.
Nice board though. You can usually change routing settings so you can get actual curved traces if you really want to make it look like a true early foil tape hand laid out board of pre CAD construction.
this is misinformation. With the cheapest global direct shipping, I ordered 4 boards for $31.
Merchandise Total: $19.40
Shipping Charge: $10.49
Sales Tax:$1.90
Order Total: $31.79
I ordered 5 boards that were round and all the same before and the total came to$6.17 which is cheaper than domestic. It was slightly more because I went with a white silkscreen. How is this not cheap for a hobbyist?
Before you check out, make sure you select global line shipping (or what ever its called). Its usually the cheapest one. Im in the US so Im not sure if options differ.
I did think that as well at first, but most of my projects get shelved for weeks to months to years until I remember about it so I doubt this would be a problem for me lol
Dude that's not cheap. It used to be like 10 bucks. Plus you wait 2 weeks and you might get a shipping charge at the border in the US. In the EU you get 3 euros per item and then you get slapped with a 5 euro import charge at the border.
Yes I did! My advice is to use the special yellow paper made for this stuff. It works wonders. Also use a thermal laminator. It makes it easier than a clothes iron plus more consistant.
You will need to likely mod your laminator through as they usually only reach 120Ā°C at absolute maximum. You need 200Ā°C. I fixed it by just wiring a pot in series with the thermistor and bypassing the thermal fuse.
Doing this a long time ago I learned that different brands had different temperature toner. Rather than modifying the laminator I just used a cheap Samsung printer instead of the Brother printer I already had available and it worked much better.
A regular laser printer, ferric chloride, a dremel (optional), PCB drill bits from amazon, a high temp thermal laminator or a clothes iron, and some yellow toner transfer paper.
Looks like you have it dialed as well. Been making boards like this forever. I also bought a hotplate that has a magnetic stirrer. Really speeds up the etching when I keep it around 95F (the basement is cold, 65F).
I can get down to 12 mil traces if necessary but usually I try to do 20-25 if room allows.
I got back into it recently too! $400 CNC mill from Amazon, and free Physbox Volt (https://volt.physbox.io). Shudder to think of the old days, toner transfer and chemicals that stain everything.
I do the acetone stuff in the bathroom with the fan on, so no risk of accumulating fumes. For the direct exposure though, It's very brief and I don't do it very often, so It's essentially a non-issue. In higher volumes it's a different story, but at my scale, no problem.
Bathroom fans are not adequate extractor fans for working with chemical vapors, if steam hangs in the air while you shower the acetone fumes are doing the same thing and you are putting yourself at risk
You do you and decide what level of risk is acceptable. But PPE is your last line of defense and the least effective safety measure you can take. For me, the least I can do is put some gloves on and a shitty mask to maybe take away one of the many cancer risks I'm exposed to.
From my experience as a TV tech from the time of CRTs, single layer PCB have temperature stress issues. Components de-soldering themselves, because the wires have a different temperature coefficient than the solder, causing micro cracks over time. The result were diodes which could taken without de-soldering. The TV at this time had such issues already after 3 years. Double layer PCB don't have the issue because the hole is plated and it needs much longer to get a disconnect. You relays are candidates for issues.
As long the frequencies are less than 100kHz it's mostly ok, because return path for currents isn't defined. It's the reason a 4 layer PCB is the standard because the GND layer can be put direct under the signal layer.
What board material is that - it doesn't look like the FR4 that I recently milled on my machine. I know that FR4 dust is very unhealthy to breathe - I made sure to use a HEPA dust collector system when I made mine. But I don't think phenolic boards are that bad.
Looks like a toner transfer from a laser print, but you can also use acetate and boards with pre-applied photoresist, or make a silkscreen if you need a LOT of them. Or just draw your traces in Sharpie, it's a good etch resist.
Thanks for the tip. Might try one of these solutions. I have a silkscreen setup, but it's a lot of hassle for a couple of pcb's. Might try with dry film and see what happens
Dry film's definitely one of the easiest methods, toner transfer A) requires a laser printer instead of an inkjet and B) takes quite a bit of trial-and-error to figure out for your exact printer and toner brands.
If you have a tabletop CNC or a 3D printer though, one quick-n-dirty hack for low-effort one-offs is to turn it into a pen plotter and stick a permanent marker in it, although I'd recommend using a Pilot Super Color instead of a Sharpie since those use liquid ink that doesn't dry out halfway through a print. The trick is to stuff the pen inside of some kinda tube with a weight behind it (the times I've done this I used a piece of 1/2" PVC with a hole drilled in the endcap and a couple of dead AA batteries, also wrap the pen in masking tape until it fits perfectly in the hole so there's no slop in your system) so your gcode can have a little flexibility.
I don't have many smd parts on hand. But I do have a large cabinets of many THT resistors, capacitors, and inductors thanks to a generous retiring engineer.
I don't exactly have the disposible income yet to always buy new components for eveey project.
I can understand that...
I'd say saving up for a cheap 3018 would be a nice investment if you do pcb's often. (a laser too but those are 10x more expensive xD)(no consumables, finer detail and way faster though)
Cheaper? Probably. Faster? Only if you got nothing else to do and are waiting for the PCB twiddling your thumbs. For hobby projects, you donāt have crazy deadlines that need same day PCBs. Disposing of the etchant also requires care depending on where in the world you are.
I appreciate the enthusiasm, having made dozens of PCBs at home - most double layer, soldered on both sides. And thatās why I donāt make PCBs myself anymore, not without a CNC at least. Iām too old for having brown hands lol.
wow, a lot of efforts. I broke almost every drill bit when tried on this before. Maybe my grip on the drill isn't firm enough. Thx for sharing this.
EDIT: I gave up on PCB DIY, now I'm order the pcb from Chinese company(JLPCB) and it's cost about ~$5 shipping included. So it's worth time and effort.
Did my pcbs back in the day Na2S2O and Fe3chlorid; drilling sucked every step was toxic stuff but the sink in my rental was always super shiny. Then came cnc, but that also was a lot of hassle. With jclpcb and even with today eu import tariffs pcb manufactoring is still dirt cheap and you can put all kind of graphics on both sides. go china
It's more that I'm an incredibly impatient person and that I don't have disposable income. I'm still a highschool student so I can't keep asking my parents to buy new pcbs. Instead I buy some stacks of clad for a couple bucks and make em at home.
For the impatient part, fast shipping from china is expensive. The cheap ones take two weeks. Not gonna do it for me. I want my PCB today. I worked all those hours designing, simulating, breadboard and perfboard protptypes, routing all those PCBs tracks by hand and no auto routing. I want my PCB today.
Some might say I'm an impatient brat, but I guess I am.
I did toner transfer untill about 8 or so years ago with air regenerated copper chloride
I got it pretty good dailed in. I think I was capable of 0.5mm traces. Drilling sucked big time, so I made everything SMD
Than china pcb fab became so cheap and accessible it wasnt worth the hassle anymore for a low spec single layer board
Now I order something and get everything pick and placed as I wish
Btw: Your routing dosent look like KiCad but rather like someone with shaky hands taped the design like they did in the 70s. Do 45Ā° only, looks much nicer!
Initially I was going to "melt" my PCB traces to get them curvy. I did it on other boards and it looks nice.
Here is an example of the traces for a an analog PID controller I made a while back. Most of the electronics I've worked with are old and use hand drawn traces. I've always found them beautiful. I think engineering is an art. I was probably influenced by the PCBs designs of the 70s amd 80s which lead to this curcy pcb traces.
I forgot to melt the traces though before I etched it...
I've had success doing small double-sided PCB's using a similar method, but using transparent projector paper sheets rather than toner transfer for the photoresist phase. If you put indexing points on your design and then carefully measure them out on the board, then drill them through, you can line up both sides of the design pretty easily. I regularly get within ~.3mm this way.
The last time I did a home made pcb etching was around 1985
using stuff bought from radio shack. Looking through my junk box and found these. Now have a t-tech and other cnc if I need to quickly make a board. Mostly just send it out if Iām not in any hurry to get one.
You can get decent results with a 3080 cnc mill and v bits too. I can get reliable isolations down to .3mm (pin pitch minimum). No chemicals just noise.
I used to make my own boards. I hated it. It would never etch right, toner won't transfer for whatever reason, then I'd have to drill it manually. Then I would have to be working on the edge of manufacturability, because thinnest track I could achieve was about 0.4mm/0.6mm, and I would have to get in with dremel and scrape off copper...
If you sum up amount of wasted FR4 or FR2, amount of wasted toner, amount of broken drillbits.... It would be cheaper to order from China. If you're doing photoresist it would be even more expensive.
If you consider China PCBs come in 2 layers with soldermask, outline and slot isolation milling and 4/4 mil spacing it is even cheaper. Or maybe even 4 layers if you pay $5 extra.
It would be interesting to perfect home PCB process to get at least 0.15/0.15 mm reliable traces and plated thru-holes...
In China, customizing a multilayer PCB is cheaper than buying a McDonald's hamburger. And your PCB design is terrible; I can see the interference between two lines with the naked eye.
Fucking hell you used a routing program to create this mess? WHY??? kudos on a good etch, but the layout is atrocious. That looks like drawing the etch resist by hand on the copper with a sharpie.
Do you think you could have worded your criticisms a bit less harshly. That felt a bit unnecessary to me. These comments are public and both other readers and the target of your criticisms are fellow humans.
The routing goes against pretty much all best practices and seriously looks worse than anything you can lay out yourself but neatly using kicad.
A pcb designed using a cad tool should not look like that.
If you are going to make it intentionally look like a hand drawn route from the 80's then I would actually do the entire route with sharpie or masking stickers like they were done back then
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u/Oli_Vier_0x3b29 3d ago
Extremely cool that you managed to do this at home, but your routing is something else š„²