Re: TI-H: PCB

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Re: TI-H: PCB


>I hate to tell you, but those markers suck!!! get some acrylic paint and a
>fine brush and paint the board, you get a solid line with that, where
>sometimes your lines are choppy if the marker line is thin (I've never gotten
>a good marker made board. Fingernail polish or paint also works. you can
>sometimes peel the fingernail poish off, but usualy you need to use remover.
>The pain will peel right off, or scratch off. scrub it with a fine sandpaper
>or the thing from the rat shack kit if you've got a good clean board with
>GREAT edges!
>
>Bettwr yet, I've found that the VERY best thing are dry transfers! I made a
>board and someone actualy though I bought it!!! I like to take the letters
>from the copyright and put labels like Made in USA, or sometimes I put my name
>on it. THAT makes it look professional!!!

The reason the markers don't work for you is because you're improperly
etching the boards.  First, make sure the ink is heavily coated, jet
black.  Next, if you're using the crappy brown FeCL3 stuff from rat
shack, you CANNOT get good results by just sticking a board in it.  

Get a small glass caserole dish and fill it with enough brown stuff to
cover the board.  Then stick the board in it and etch just as normal,
except this time hold the dish over a low-heat stove.  The etchant
should be warm or very warm to the touch (but not enough to boil or
see bubbles, just reasonably warm/hot).  Once the etchant gets heated
enough, it will not only etch 5x faster, you will get clean edges with
markers.  The secret is etching speed...  If you etch too slowly (like
FeCL3 normally does) the etchant has way too much time to eat through
the ink and it gets fux0red :).

There are other etchants that work much better, btw, such as the
powder blue stuff that comes in solid form (you can get it from
mouser, but it's pretty nasty stuff :).

You can even etch directly with high molar hydrochloric acid, but only
do this if you're a psycho and you're outside because it produces a
ton of poisonous chlorine gas (i.e. it can kill you if you breathe
it).  But, i've heard you can etch an entire board in under 2 minutes
that way.

-Mel
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