Single sided PCB manufacturing

Steve2381

Senior Member
Hi all

I have had a go (no laughing) at designing a single sided PCB.
Then I found some PCB in the workshop and was going to have a go at making this, but I have a feeling that isn't going to end well!
I read you can print onto a magazine page using a laser printer, and then iron that onto the board. I could not even get the laser printer to accept magazine pages without it jamming :confused:
Do you think the tracks are a little narrow to etch at home?

I can't find any online companies that will produce this for a reasonable cost. Perhaps I need to invest in some photo etching kit.

Can anyone see any obvious newbie errors on this pcb (layout, not the actual circuit)
There is a mix of SMT and DIL IC's purely because that is what I have here, and I can't get all of them in the same format

I am pretty sure I should have bigger supply 'lines' etc. I wasn't sure how to approach making a PCB... so larger 0v and 5v lines are probably hard to add now.

View attachment 19516 View attachment 19515

I will have another go later this week at making a dual sided PCB, then I can get rid of the topside links (although I actually managed to end up with less of them than I thought)
 

Jeremy Harris

Senior Member
I've made probably hundreds of PCBs at home, using a laser printer and ironing the print directly on to a very clean copper clad board. I've used several different techniques, all have worked but some are far more reliable than others. I first used to use shiny magazine paper, cut cleanly at the edges so that it wouldn't jam in the printer. It works, but often needs soaking for a long time after ironing it on to the copper clad board and isn't a method I use anymore.

I switched to using the thinnest glossy photo paper that my laser printer would handle. That's better than glossy magazine paper, with the right settings on the printer, but needs even more soaking and rubbing to get it off the board.

Next I tried the stupidly expensive blue coloured plastic film. That works very well indeed, as you just let it cool and then the film pulls away easily, leaving a very good resist behind.

Now I use the cheap, pale yellow, Chinese coated paper, that comes in packs of 100 A4 sheets on ebay for less than the price of 5 sheets of the blue film. This works very well too, but is a little more fussy about being ironed on at a fairly high temperature, with more pressure than is needed with the blue film.

For a beginner, the blue film is the easiest to use, but it is expensive. I'd suggest buying a pack and trying it, to get a feel for making boards this way. It's fairly tolerant of ironing temperature, the only thing you have to watch is that the printer is set to handle plastic film (the transparency printer settings seemed to work for me, with no jams).

The cheap pale yellow stuff from China is almost as easy to use, but peels off more cleanly if you cool the board and film down before trying to peel it off. I usually stick the board, with the ironed on paper, in the freezer for ten minutes, as that seems to help the paper peel off more cleanly.

There is a learning curve with this stuff, and you will waste some materials to start with. Boards can be recovered if the ink transfer is incomplete as a consequence of poor ironing on technique, or temperature, by washing with a suitable solvent. The main cost is the blue film, which is too expensive for me to use now. Worth noting that you need to apply quite a lot of pressure to the iron, and make sure all areas are rubbed down hard with it (without moving the film or paper relative to the board) in order to get a good result.
 

sniper887

Member
I've done PCBs using the photoetch process. You print the design onto transparency and use presensitized boards which have photoresist on them. Expose, develop, then etch and you have a board. My last several though I went though a PCB service (OSH Park). You get reasonably priced 2 sided boards of quite good quality. The trade off is it takes a couple weeks to get the boards.
 

cravenhaven

Senior Member
I have been wanting to do my own boards for a long time, but just cant seem to get the gear together to make it happen. I have some Ammonium Persulphate as etchant and various copper clad boards including some photo-resist ones but am mainly stuck on the laser printer. I have an ink-jet, but I believe these dont work. I have also heard that Brother laser printers dont work.
So my question is? which low cost laser printers DO work, and what are the essential specs that the printer needs?. Is a mono printer better than colour?.
I have heard that the old HP laserjet printers were good, but they are a bit old now and parts are difficult to come by. Do the new ones work as well?. There are also Samsung, Fuji, Canon printers available in my low price range.
 

Steve2381

Senior Member
Mmm... experiment time then!
One thing I thought of in bed last night (and not obvious here).... the one SMT part on my design will need flipping as it will be mounted on the rear of the board. All the rest are through hole.
I do have the same design however with all the parts as DIL, using a converter to turn the smt into DIL. Does seem a little pointless that, but the board size is still the same.

There was a guy on Ebay who would mill the copper off PCB's for a decent price, but I can't find his link now (typical)
 

tmfkam

Senior Member
As recommended to me here previously, I can't fault DirtyPCB's. Very good quality for the boards I've so far had, around ten days delivery, ten small boards 3cm x 10cm under twenty pounds. Must be close to the cost of diy? This was for a double sided board, with silkscreen and etch resist.
 

womai

Senior Member
Actually there are now several Chineses vendors offering very inexpensive double-sided boards with silkscreen, plated vias, soldermask etc. Sizes are <5x5cm, <5x10cm, <10x10cm. a 5x10cm board typically comes in at around US$25 + a few $ shipping. Delivery times after ordering vary, in my experience between 2 and 5 weeks to Germany. For example I have been using Itead several times and always got good quality boards from them. Seems like they moved their online store to https://www.itead.cc/open-pcb.html

Hard to beat that with self-made boards...
 

Jeremy Harris

Senior Member
Has anyone tried HCl + H2O2 etchant? And what etchant ARE you using... :)
I still use ferric chloride, as I "inherited" a large pot of powder. I do add a dash of HCl, just to make it work better when it's only warm, rather than hot. I can't use the ferric chloride at high temperatures with the laser print transfer method, as it affects the resist, so etching tends to take a bit longer.
 

JimPerry

Senior Member
If you haven't got a Laser you could try getting your artwork Laser/Xerox copied at a print shop or office onto suitable paper. include a line of known length so you can measure final print for accuracy at 100% I've had good results with the waxy paper from used CD-label sheets :confused:

Or take a PDF on a memory stick?
 
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Jeremy Harris

Senior Member
how do you guys go about drilling the whole, some sort of drill press or just a hand held dremel?

I have a very high speed drill press, that takes drill up to 3mm or so maximum, and runs at several thousand RPM. I used to use a hand-held drill like a Dremel (the old PCB Mini Drill that ran on 12V) but a hand held drill isn't easy with tungsten carbide bits, as they are very easy to break. Ordinary HSS drill bits blunt very quickly if drilling GRP boards, but are far more tolerant when used in a hand held drill.
 

abenn

Senior Member
I've been using photo-resist PCB for several years now. I read about the laser printer iron-on method, but as my printer is an ink-jet that was a non-starter for me. I print my design onto a sticky-backed clear vinyl sheet (because sticky-backed is what I have for making decals) using only yellow ink, at "best" quality. I found that the yellow ink is noticeably more resistant to the UV light I use to transfer the design onto the PCB, so gives sharper, more reliable, results. My inks are HP; it might be a different story with other brands.

I get my chemicals from Maplins -- ferric chloride for the etching and I-don't-know-what for the photo developing. I started with their beginners' kit and have bought new chemicals as required. With the ferric chloride at 20C or higher, it takes about 20 minutes to etch a board.

For drilling the holes I use my Dremel in a drill-press, with a 0.7 or 0.8mm drill. For pin headers and some larger components I re-drill with a 1mm drill by hand after tinning the board.
 

MartinM57

Moderator
+n for Itead Studio - I get literally hundreds of boards per year from them and the quality is very good. Maybe 1% or so of them have very minor imperfections with the silk screen printing (smudges, parts of letters missing etc) but electrically I've not had a dud yet. They look completely professional. I pay for the DHL delivery and the last lot I received - last week - was 9 days from uploading the Gerbers to the DHL man knocking on the door.

For the OP's layout, for a homemade design, I would recommend beefing up the solder pads for the DS1307/08M2 etc - they are far too small IMHO and they will either not come out at all/risk being pulled off the board when you drill/not be big enough to actually take a reasonable amount of solder. Perhaps something like the following would be better (traces can still go between these)
1.JPG

Also, "copper pours" (filling the blank spaces with copper) will help you electrically (reduce chance of interference) and make your chemicals last longer (less copper to remove!)
 

cravenhaven

Senior Member
I've been using photo-resist PCB for several years now. I read about the laser printer iron-on method, but as my printer is an ink-jet that was a non-starter for me. I print my design onto a sticky-backed clear vinyl sheet (because sticky-backed is what I have for making decals) using only yellow ink, at "best" quality. I found that the yellow ink is noticeably more resistant to the UV light I use to transfer the design onto the PCB, so gives sharper, more reliable, results. My inks are HP; it might be a different story with other brands.
.
Thanks abenn
Is this the sort of paper you mean? http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/HIGH-DEF-CLEAR-A4-INKJET-SELF-ADHESIVE-STICKER-LABEL-VINYL-NOT-PAPER-5-SHEETS-/130740037607?hash=item1e70b6a7e7:g:XJEAAOSw-W5U0Rkk
 

abenn

Senior Member
I believe that any "injet vinyl" will do, though mine is matt, rather than gloss. In fact, any inkjet transparency material will do the job, such as what's used for overhead projector slides. I don't remember where mine came from, but here's something like it -- cheaper than the one in your link.
 

Janne

Senior Member
+n for Itead Studio - I get literally hundreds of boards per year from them and the quality is very good. Maybe 1% or so of them have very minor imperfections with the silk screen printing (smudges, parts of letters missing etc) but electrically I've not had a dud yet. They look completely professional. I pay for the DHL delivery and the last lot I received - last week - was 9 days from uploading the Gerbers to the DHL man knocking on the door.

For the OP's layout, for a homemade design, I would recommend beefing up the solder pads for the DS1307/08M2 etc - they are far too small IMHO and they will either not come out at all/risk being pulled off the board when you drill/not be big enough to actually take a reasonable amount of solder. Perhaps something like the following would be better (traces can still go between these)
View attachment 19519

Also, "copper pours" (filling the blank spaces with copper) will help you electrically (reduce chance of interference) and make your chemicals last longer (less copper to remove!)
What this guy said. 100% working pcb's so far from ITead. Only thing thay annoys me with them is that they always add their internal pcb number to the silkscreen and it sometimes messes up a nice outlook. Lately I've been adding an empty box for them and they usually use the intuition correctly and put their number in there :)
 

premelec

Senior Member
FWIW I've had several MINI PCB lots done by ExpressPCB - 3 pieces 2.5 x 3.8" two side plated through holes $55. 3 day turn around - good quality with any errors made by me included just as specified... :) [last lot I made no errors and PCBs were perfect]. Their layout program is pretty simple... I used to draw boards by hand with marker ink and speedball steel pens - drilling holes first from a zeroxed pattern [holes first so hand drawing 'sees' exactly where to go]. I'd usually stack three boards to drill at once with drill press - index holes in boards with pin through them to keep them in line...... whatever works!
 
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Steve2381

Senior Member
Thanks for the advice all.
That link above is the guy I found on Ebay who mills the copper away. Might give him a go.
I tried again last night with my old Canon laser printer, but no real success.

I also tried increasing the pad sizes as suggested, but i cannot do all of them. The DIL footprints have a couple of places where the track goes between the pads (not ideal I know). So I cannot make them bigger.

Probably my best bet is to have another go, but with a dual sided board and get rid of the top links and the tracks between the DIL IC holders.
 

ZOR

Senior Member
Sometimes I have used straight wire links from pads to pads to overcome tight tracks. However make sure where you put a jumper/s links that the link will not pass over components. There is notthing to stop you having more than one link to eventually get from A to B, but if doing so remember to put two pads together for each link to get soldered into. I also noticed some of your circular pads have very little sorrounds compared to others on the board. This means the etching may attack these faster than the healthier ones. In addition when drilling holes you must be more careful on drill diameter/position of hole not to remove the surrounding copper of the hole. Good luck
 

Skiwi

New Member
I print the design (done on RS DesignSpark software) onto transparency sheet, then expose that onto Kinsten presensitised laminate, for 4 minutes, over an 11W compact fluoro bulb.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1pcs-PCB-Board-15cmx10cm-x-1-6mm-PP-1510-1015-Positive-Acting-Presensitized-/252041681052?hash=item3aaedad89c:g:2WAAAOSwu4BVtyhN
But this product seems to be getting scarce on e-bay lately?

For the transparency printing, I print using an older HP Laserjet 3200. This gives good quality, but if I want perfection, I take it to work and print to the commercial photocopier. You could do the same (as per other posts on this thread) by taking your pdf to a print shop. What you have to remember is to set the printer properties to transparency
I also have a new Fujixerox FX CP115 colour laser. This blurs on the printout, so is useless for pcbs. Possibly because it does not have a transparency option in the setup.

For small projects or prototypes, this is a cheap and fast method.
 

Steve2381

Senior Member
Well I designed the PCB's using Diptrace (Free). Stupidly using the top layer of copper instead of the bottom however! (Single sided PCB).
Sent the Diptrace files to the guy on Ebay who has already milled them, drilled them and posted them back. Should be here tomorrow or the day after.
He says they have come out very well.
£20 all inclusive for both boards. I have to be honest, that price is fine for a VERY quick turn around. I only emailed the files last night.
One board was 100mm x 66mm and the other was 66mm x 49mm. I spent that in Costa Coffee on Sunday!

The time I would spend messing around with laser printers, etching fluid etc... not worth the grief (to me anyway).

He changed the copper track from the top to the bottom for me. I could have just sent the layer and drilling files, but he suggested simply sending the whole diptrace file over, then he can see the finished product and spot any obvious layout errors, or things he didn't think would mill correctly.

Will post pics when they arrive
 

Steve2381

Senior Member
Well my PCB's have arrived and they are excellent.
The milling technique appears to be very accurate and clean.
All the component holes are nice, and he even routed out the centres of the variable resistors so they can be adjusted from either side.
Certainly use this method again

View attachment 19561View attachment 19562
 

MartinM57

Moderator
Pretty impressive I must say - and much cleaner for you...a few emails and not a chemical/laser printer/iron etc in site.

The 2nd picture in the 2nd post seems to show a lot of missing holes/bad alignment - trick of the light?
 

Steve2381

Senior Member
Yep - its the angle of the photo Martin. Every hole is spot on centre and none missing. I have to say, from emailing him the Diptrace files on Monday, to getting them today - very happy.
There is no way that this board would have worked if I had tried it myself, especially with those tiny pads around the IC's

This is his webpage. His name is Marek, and I can highly recommend his work

http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/eminence2001?_trksid=p2047675.l2559
 

ZOR

Senior Member
Thought rather than start new thread I would tack this on here.

I am making a single sided PCB, using Diptrace for the artwork. I do not know how to get my image printed so the toner is next to the copper. I tried making mirrored artwork, the toner would have been next to the copper but it's the wrong way round. Am I missing something? The last board I did I used artwork away from the copper, maybe lucky but the UV did not seem to creep round.

My Diptrace combo settings are Top Assy, Top Side and Top(1) is this correct. Thanks
 

tmfkam

Senior Member
I have some vague recollection from making PCBs at the College I worked for, that I would print the artwork 'normally' from EasyPC, but crucially, print to a PDF printer that in turn automatically inverted the artwork for printing onto transparency paper.

Using Eagle, I don't recall having problems, though by then I may have had a slightly better printer I'd 'collected' from the IT waste bin. Some printer drivers have an option for inverting the print jobs, and it could be I made use of that rather than the PDF printer option.
 

ZOR

Senior Member
Thanks tmfkam. I don't really want to copy/print from pdf in case my scaling/alignment goes out. I am looking around on the subject of swapping top to bottom layers in Diptrace but nothing found so far. I am using the free edition of Diptrace, and would have thought it would have defaulted to a single sided board. Don't want to redo all my layout.
 

ZOR

Senior Member
Just tried printing to Picaxe PDF printer, and then to paper, but the image was the same. Am I correct in thinking the reason my artwork is not against the copper on a single sided board because I was using Top Side. Just emailed Diptrace with my problem but may be a delay getting back if there is or not a fix.
 

ZOR

Senior Member
Hello tmfkam, I have just twigged to what you said. I just opened my Diptrace, mirrored the layout in preview, then sent that to Picaxe PDF. Then when printing on film the print is mirrored, with the print now ends up against the copper when turned over. The scale seems to be perfect, so your vague collection of a college fix works. Many thanks for your help, I dreaded doing the layout again. And now I end up with a PDF artwork master.
 

PhilHornby

Senior Member
I have to say, from emailing him the Diptrace files on Monday, to getting them today - very happy.
There is no way that this board would have worked if I had tried it myself, especially with those tiny pads around the IC's

This is his webpage. His name is Marek, and I can highly recommend his work

http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/eminence2001?_trksid=p2047675.l2559
I echo Steve's recommendation of this guy's services.

Tip for other PCB novices: use the "Copper Pour" facility, with a separation of "0.4mm" to see what your finished board will actually look like - assuming you're not paying extra to have all the excess copper removed.
 

PhilHornby

Senior Member
I recently needed a PCB making for a project that includes lots of Mains voltage Transformers, Triacs & opto-couplers. Even I'm not foolish enough to try and use strip board for that :eek:.

Unfortunately, the eBayer mentioned earlier in the thread (Marek) is no longer offering his services, so I had to look around for someone else. The very best priced/most 'professional' looking service I could find, was a firm fairly local to me - but it was still going to be a 10 day wait ... and £60 service (www.hi5electronics.co.uk/about/).

I found eBayers who didn't answer my messages, or who couldn't drill the holes, or could only mill minimum 1mm tracks etc, which ruled them out. There were others, who I guess were re-selling someone else's (Itead?) service - and the 'PCB poolers' - none of whom appealed much.

Then I (or rather Google) discovered: AllPCB http://www.allpcb.com/about_us.html

I was a bit wary of dealing with a Chinese company - but the whole experience was 1st class. (It helps that my other half is an Importer, who could decipher the words they used, into the questions there were actually asking :))

I ordered the board on Christmas Day, and after a few rounds of emails, they manufactured it on the 28th December and it arrived (via TNT) on 2nd January. I can't really condone that the invoice value was below the UK VAT threshold - but at least it prevented a $25 charge by TNT for collecting it).

AllPCB's minimum order is five PCBs, but I actually received seven! (despite needing only one) The board is 180mm x 140mm and is single-layer, silk screened on the top and solder-resist(ed) on the bottom. Some of the emails were concerned with the fact that I'd got silk-screen printing over holes and missing solder-resist from some of the tracks. Apparently, silk-screening ink down holes does nothing for the 'solder-abilty' of the pad at the other side. I purposefully omitted solder resist from some of the tracks, so I could 'beef them up', with extra solder - but AllPCB checked that this was intentional.

One thing these companies don't like you doing, is combining several designs onto one PCB. Itead, for example, are very clear about that. Of course, being a cheap-skate, I'd done exactly that, so had to disguise the fact before I got through the production audit :)

Oh I forgot to mention the price ...
...for 7 off 180mm x 140mm silkscreened, solder-resisted, single-layer boards, delivered in 7 days over Christmas ... the cost was $35.51 (£27.11).

The boards are quite translucent, which means the copper is actually more visible through the board, than it is from the copper side (where it is covered by 'resist'). The next board I have made will have component's values silk-screened on, rather than their identifier. ('1K' would be far more useful than 'R9'!)

I'll post photos in the next post - I seem to exceeded some new forum limit :confused:
 
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PhilHornby

Senior Member
Good to see the HC-12 going strong.
The board that I needed making, left a large area of 'spare' copper, so I thought I'd have some (well 7 as it turned out) spare 'Room Temperature Sensor' boards made. I currently have six deployed, but five of them are currently built-on strip board. I'd used http://www.picaxe.com/Software/Third-Party/PEBBLE/ which greatly assisted in getting everything on there - but try as I might, I always ended-up with the HC-12 at 90° to where I wanted it (because of the direction of the copper strips). There were more than enough links that had to be cut to the correct length as well. By contrast, the PCB approach felt like I was assembling someone else's pre-made kit :)


 
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