doing perfectly fidn with press n peel, use a small plastic aquarium with those fish bubble blowing thingy ... might get a proper etching tank soon haha.
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doing perfectly fidn with press n peel, use a small plastic aquarium with those fish bubble blowing thingy ... might get a proper etching tank soon haha.
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I use Staples picture paper (10 bucks for 100 sheets), eagle and ferric chloride. The ferric chloride seems to lose its strength greatly with every use. One of the little tricks I have found it that I usually leave as much copper on the board for grounding as possible so that the etchant does not need to etch more than is needed.
How do you guys heat up your etchant? Can you use a microwave?
I would strongly suggest you guys use staples picture paper because it is so cheap, usually I print out layouts without caution since each sheet is so cheap.
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yeap tths wat i do too. keep gnd as big as possible.. one all the routing doen i would just stretch the whole board for a gnd poligon... saves time to when etching..
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toalan,
Out of curiosity, do you laser print into the photo paper and later iron-on? or how do you use the photo paper. My personal best is using inkjet into transparency, develop and etch (but lately I have issues with my new inkjet and its ink/transparency adhesion).
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I have used both Ferric Chloride and Sodium Persulfate for etching. The Ferric is very quick, but the Persulfate is gentle and tends to undercut the traces less. My best results have come from Eagle(The best!) with a Laser printer and photo etching using Injectorall boards. I will routinely print .010" width lines with less than .007" spacing. I could never achieve this with iron on personally. As far as the etchant, I will heat Ferric up to 125F in the microwave, in a pyrex dish. I drop the board in, and gently wipe it with a foam paint brush of the desired width. Etching time is around 2-3 minutes for 1 oz copper. Other than fumes and my better half yelling at me for the occasional stain on the microwave handle, I have had no problems. I never heat the solution more than 5 seconds at a time before swirling. I'll put in enough to cover the board + 3/8".
Ron
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At $11 a pack the press-n-peel is cheap so I'm sticking with it. (allelectronics.com)
As far as heating, the etching tank I just bought uses a fish tank heater. Works great.
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just a quick tip.. once u have wash with acid and need to remove the leftovers dont use a hard brush or sandpaper.. just use a cloth and thinner.. it works..
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