Looking for sharpie ink or plotter ink

[aggie_67]

Lets evaluate the root of the problem, everyone is thinking ink's, but what you need to etch pcb boards is an acid resistant material (doesn't need to be acid proof as it only needs to resist the acid for 5-10 minutes) disolved in a suitable solvent. A few of the well known acid resistant materials are wax, plastics, rubber, etc. Some readily available "potential" canidates are lacquer or urethane paint, plexiglass cement, wax disolved in styrene. Need to be very careful with these solvents especially when spraying etc in any amount as they are high flamable, even explosive, with out even getting into the health hazzard.

Sharpie has solved a lot of the details, solvent evaporation rate / viscosity doesn't allow the ink to run before it drys etc. The solvent used is either safer or the application method exposes so little to the air it is considered safe. The solvent is why sharpie has that smell. Personally I would prefer my dried acid resist material to have more body than Sharpie ink, but if it works it works. The safety problem may be why Sharpie ink is not available in bulk.

[strat]

take a look at some electronic supply houses forget the name of the stuff but its a clear material that you print your layout on with a laser printer then iron it on the board if you can get the material but don't have access to a laser printer put your layout on a floppy and take it to like office depot and have them print it on your clear stuff cheaper then buying a laser printer and works really well

you might even get by with the overhead transparency sheets they sell at office depot too

[beone]

If you really want sharpie ink, or Marks a Lot, You can get it by this method. Pry open the marker, inside you will find a kind of "tampon" which contains the ink. Place it standing upright in some kind of container like a small plastic cup. Then take an eyedropper and drop alcohol, the highest proof you can get- I use 90 percent isopropyl, on the top end. the alcohol will chase the ink down into the cup. I use this to get the ink to color epoxy for inlays in castings I make. Marks a Lot and sharpie are by far the prettiest inks I have found.

[DrStein99]

beone; thats an interesting method!

[greggv]

Try Squid ink, they sell ink in bottles for packaging ink jet printers, as does Video Jet and Diagraph. They all have web sites. My company uses lots of Diagraph ink, and some from Squid, they will definately print on steel!

[quadenergy]

I've been using my HP-7475 plotter to do this for years. The trick is that the inks have to be thin enough to work with the plotter pens from KOH-I-NOOR. Layout fluid ( for lathes ) works very well as a resist. It comes in blue or red and is cheap. Be sure to use the 1/32 inch boards from Digi Key. I have been looking for a way to do this with an inkjet, but have had no luck.

[lez]

how do you get boards into the hp?

I'm looking for good ink (UK) to do this with, I'm making my own pens for the plotter from cheap CD/DVD pens, I get 4 for a £(4/$2) and they have .5mm fibre tips in a metal sleave.

[DrStein99]

If you cut the boards to size, a 1/32" pcb is plenty thin enough to pass thru the rollars as paper normally does.

I think I was using .3 mm fibre pens to trace leads. I couldnt get this to work as I always had trouble with the etching process - either taking off too much or not enough.

[jpgdesigns]

http://www.ink-refills-ink.com/1printer-bulk.php
Try this link.

JPG

[lez]

tam $15 dollars shipping is a sting though (uk) and I cant order more than 1 bottle as import limit is about $30(18ukp) before I get taxed to death ((total+4%)+17%)+$40 handling)

[lez]

Originally Posted by DrStein99 If you cut the boards to size, a 1/32" pcb is plenty thin enough to pass thru the rollars as paper normally does. I think I was using .3 mm fibre pens to trace leads. I couldnt get this to work as I always had trouble with the etching process - either taking off too much or not enough.

Ha I see, no my problem is boards I get are about 150mm*100mm so dont hit the rollers, tried taping one to paper but it just slid about.

No problem as I'm now trying them on the calcomp as its a gantry style flatbed upto a3+ a bit more