Printer for PCB ?

[WayneHill]

I know there are a varity of ways of creating PCB boards. Has anyone tried using a CDROM printer like this one to print the traces on copper?

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...0737&pfp=srch1

Look like it could work.

[abasir]

Those printers print on specially coated CDs which has a paperlike texture to it. Doubt it will work on the copper layer

[PEU]

I tried with a Casio CW-50 and didnt worked


Pablo

[DennisCNC]

How did teachers in school print color overhead projector transparences? Those printers should work then. I don't think they had color laser printers.

[plexer]

Were they not just an inkjet transparency which is actually rough to hold the ink until it dries and then printed in a normal inkjet printer as the transparency is flexible? I don't believe there is a special tranparency printer.

[greybeard]

If someone could come up with a method of making laser printer ink conductive, you could easily lay down a copper layer on top. Print on paper, tranfer(via ironing) onto insulating board, then copper plate.

[plexer]

Well laser printer is transferred inside a printer by using a voltage of several hundred volts to charge the particles so they are attracted to the drum to be transferred onto the paper and heated to fuse it into the paper, what would be good is an adapted laser printer that can put the toner straight onto copper but I doubt that would work because of the processes involved.

Otherwise what about dye sublimation printers as used for things such as coated ceramics, mouse pads etc... not sure if this would give an etch resist layer or not.

Ben

[turtlekilroy]

This may be a bit simplistic, but if you are looking to apply a resist straight to copper clad what about using an old pen plotter? I imagine some mods will be necessary but it shouldn't be to bad. Or what about an old inkjet printer that's been modified to feed a PCB straight through?

I've been trying to work up a DIY PCB mill from old printer, scanner, photocopier parts but the only printers people are giving up are wimpy injets. I'm thinking I might try to be slick and basically make my own etch resist plotter with 2 fixed gantries. The first would have the etch resist pen and the second a drill for drilling the holes. The hardest part would be making sure all the holes were drilled in the right spots since I would be basically working backwards with the drill.

[plexer]

Pen plotters have been used by people and there is at least one yahoo group dedicated to this what a lot of them do though is coat a board completely with an etch resist and then use a blade in the plotter to scratch out between the tracks revealing the copper so that once it is etched this just is eaten away similar result to issolation milling.

I don't think standard inkjet ink is going to dry successfully without running on a copper clad board maybe if the board was warmed to strat with?

Ben

[CLaNZeR]

I have tried various pens in my machine to simply draw the tracks onto copper and the hardest thing is to keep the ink flowing at a reasonable pace so the lines are even with no breaks.

Another thought was to spray the ink onto the copper board with something like a inkjet printer head, but using special ink that will resist the etching process.

Last though was using a air driven dispenser unit, I already have one of these that nicely dispenses solder paste using my machine for SMD pcbs.

The nozzles you can get do go down to very fine and the timing solution and variable air pressure is very accurate.
Just sussing out a suitable ink with the correct consistency.

Regards

Sean.

[plexer]

Seems the pcb industry iteself is heading this way:
http://tinyurl.com/9qyse

Solder masks being commonly printed via inkjet and now etch resist a possbility
UV curable inks seem to be a way to go.

Ben

[greybeard]

Coming into this thread with my own odd background of elecronics/litho printing/gilding, I am promted to wonder if you could print a simple circuit layout with a laser printer, re-heat the print to soften the resin, then lay down gold leaf over it.

Gold leaf - very thin but a high conductivity. Readily available, not too difficult to use -transfer leaf might work just as well.
- doesn't corrode, solderable, or perhaps glue the component to the printed surface and use silver paste for the final connection to the tracks.

If I can get the old laser going again, I'll give it a try, and post results.

Anyone suggest a test set up that would show that is was as good as traditional copper tracks on a size for size basis ?