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Making PCBs: The Toner Transfer Method
Jul 15 2011 12:22 AM | Robotics Guy in Electronics
Introduction
Making Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) at home can be a fun and rewarding experience. Learning to make your own PCBs can also save you a lot of money; the single-sided PCBs I make generally cost about $1.25 to make, while sending a board off to a PCB fab house would probably cost between $50 and $100 dollars.
Note: I do not take responsibility for anything that may happen to you by following these instructions on how to make PCBs. This method requires the use of dangerous chemicals and I'm sure you could easily hurt yourself if you're not careful. In short, if you hurt yourself, your equipment, or anything else by following this guide don't come crying to me. You have no one to blame but yourself.
There are a couple of things you will need to make a PCB:
Making the Board
The first step is to thoroughly clean your PCB. I find that lightly sanding the board under a running faucet with 600 grit sandpaper works really well, making the board nice and shiny.
Next, clean the board by wiping it with paper towels wet with acetone; do this as many times as needed until the paper towel comes off completely clean. Be really careful not to touch the board, or to get it dirty in any way.
This would be a good time to turn on your laminator, as it will probably take about 15 minutes to warm up.
Now that the board is ready, it's time to print the artwork! Open up your paper tray and, using a pen, mark a little x in the front-right corner of the top sheet. Open up your Eagle file (or whatever program you use) and print your board, adjusting the margins so that the board will print in the middle of the sheet. Once it prints, cut out a piece of your glossy paper just slightly larger than the image you just printed and use masking tape to secure the glossy paper over the printed image.
You've probably figured out by now why we wrote that little x on the paper – it's so that you know which way to put the paper back in the tray, so that when you print your board again it will be printed right on top of the glossy paper. Go ahead and print your board again.
Once it's printed, un-tape your artwork – being careful not to get fingerprints on the image – and place it face-down on the copper clad board, again using masking tape to secure it in place.
You might want to put on some gloves, as the board is going to get pretty hot. Run your board through the laminator about eight times.
Now, place your in a bowl of water and let it sit for a little while to soften up the paper. Slowly peel the paper off, keeping the board under water (or under a running faucet). Carefully scrub all the paper off the board, using a bunched-up paper towel or a soft brush.
Mix your etchant and drop the board in. Agitating the etchant while the board is in it will make the etching go faster. Be careful not to leave the board in too long; leave the board in just long enough for all of the copper to eaten off the board, then take it out.
Wash the etchant off the board thoroughly, and then use sandpaper to get the toner off the traces. That's it!
Results
Here are pictures of some PCBs I've made:
Making Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) at home can be a fun and rewarding experience. Learning to make your own PCBs can also save you a lot of money; the single-sided PCBs I make generally cost about $1.25 to make, while sending a board off to a PCB fab house would probably cost between $50 and $100 dollars.
Note: I do not take responsibility for anything that may happen to you by following these instructions on how to make PCBs. This method requires the use of dangerous chemicals and I'm sure you could easily hurt yourself if you're not careful. In short, if you hurt yourself, your equipment, or anything else by following this guide don't come crying to me. You have no one to blame but yourself.
There are a couple of things you will need to make a PCB:
- Copper clad boards.
- I highly recommend purchasing these from Electronics Express. I've bought a lot of stuff from this company and have always been very satisfied. As far as I know, they also have the lowest priced copper clad boards. Single-sided 3"x4" boards cost only $0.95 cents.
- A laminator.
- I bought my GBC creative laminator on ebay for $25 dollars with free shipping, from the seller "mybinding." After getting your laminator, You can follow this guide to hack it to run at a higher temperature.
- Acetone, Peroxide, and Muriatic acid. (The etchant).
- You can buy the acetone and muriatic acid from someplace like Lowes or Home depot for only a few dollars each. The peroxide can be purchased at any drug store if you don't already have some. Follow this guide on how to make your etchant.
- Goggles, gloves, and a plastic container.
- These go along with the chemicals mentioned above, which can be kind of nasty. You will definitely want to wear goggles and gloves while handling your etchant
- A laser printer.
- The laser printer is what you use to print your PCB image. Beware that not all printers and toners work well. I use an old HP Laserjet 4M Plus that I bought cheaply off ebay and it works great.
- Glossy paper.
- Many people used Staples Photo Basic paper with great success, but recently Staples changed the paper keeping the name and packaging. The new paper does not work well and seems to leave a kind of hard, plastic residue on the copper after the transfer. Some like using magazine paper, but my results when using it have been very inconsistent – sometimes it would work great, but other times the printing or transfer would be terrible. What we need is a light, glossy paper, and I think I've found just that in the Graytex 32lb high gloss paper. It isn't super-cheap; a 100 sheet pack costs $25, coming out to be $0.25 cents per sheet, but it works incredibly well. Furthermore, as you will see later in this tutorial, you don't need to use an entire sheet for a single PCB, but can actually use one sheet for several boards.
Making the Board
The first step is to thoroughly clean your PCB. I find that lightly sanding the board under a running faucet with 600 grit sandpaper works really well, making the board nice and shiny.
Next, clean the board by wiping it with paper towels wet with acetone; do this as many times as needed until the paper towel comes off completely clean. Be really careful not to touch the board, or to get it dirty in any way.
This would be a good time to turn on your laminator, as it will probably take about 15 minutes to warm up.
Now that the board is ready, it's time to print the artwork! Open up your paper tray and, using a pen, mark a little x in the front-right corner of the top sheet. Open up your Eagle file (or whatever program you use) and print your board, adjusting the margins so that the board will print in the middle of the sheet. Once it prints, cut out a piece of your glossy paper just slightly larger than the image you just printed and use masking tape to secure the glossy paper over the printed image.
You've probably figured out by now why we wrote that little x on the paper – it's so that you know which way to put the paper back in the tray, so that when you print your board again it will be printed right on top of the glossy paper. Go ahead and print your board again.
Once it's printed, un-tape your artwork – being careful not to get fingerprints on the image – and place it face-down on the copper clad board, again using masking tape to secure it in place.
You might want to put on some gloves, as the board is going to get pretty hot. Run your board through the laminator about eight times.
Now, place your in a bowl of water and let it sit for a little while to soften up the paper. Slowly peel the paper off, keeping the board under water (or under a running faucet). Carefully scrub all the paper off the board, using a bunched-up paper towel or a soft brush.
Mix your etchant and drop the board in. Agitating the etchant while the board is in it will make the etching go faster. Be careful not to leave the board in too long; leave the board in just long enough for all of the copper to eaten off the board, then take it out.
Wash the etchant off the board thoroughly, and then use sandpaper to get the toner off the traces. That's it!
Results
Here are pictures of some PCBs I've made:
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