Dry-film photoresist is the solution you need. It comes in thin blue film that you can iron on copper-cladded board (not the solder mask paste). The exposed photoresist turns darker and hardens while unexposed part dissolves in alkaline solution (sodium carbonate). It's much cheaper than presensitized UV PCB, and can be removed & reapplied if something goes wrong during exposure.
@@maevebaksa the dry-film photoresist can be ironed on the copper-clad board with lowest heat setting or using a laminator. After exposure, develop the board with sodium carbonate solution, use a soft bristle toothbrush to clean the traces. I use old-school ferric chloride for etching. The etchant is heated on Ender 3 bed and some gcode to agitate the etchant. The cured photoresist can be clean off with acetone or let the board sit in sodium hydroxide solution. I also found that the cured photoresist peels off in IPA, while uncured photoresist dissolves in IPA. Best thing about dry-film is if anything goes wrong during exposure you can just remove it and reapply the film. With presensitized PCB you only have one chance.
OMFG.... I've been looking for a way to do this for months and the solution was in front of my face, on my desk this whole time! Thank you so much for this!!!!!!
This takes me back 50 years when I was a teenager making pcbs in the bathroom by exposing boards with a sun tanning lamp. In hindsight I had lots of failures mostly because I was spraying the Kodak liquid resist. The resulting coating thickness was not uniform enough requiring different exposure times across the board, basically clean off the resist and try again. As I recall the Kodak literature recommended spinning the board to produce a uniform film thickness. The copper surface also needed to be insanely clean before attempting resist coating. If the resin printer UV light source is columnated consider spin coating before placing the coated board on the printer. This way the flatness of the board will not be a factor. Cheers-Peter
I did the same thing. A buddy of mine found an old home sun tanning lamp. Used to make my own and copied a commercial guitar effects pedals. I used tape and overhead plastic to make the masks.
That result is actually pretty nice. I've been doing prototype PCBs for our company for a long time, but we cleaned out that pcb-prototype-lab a few years ago. It just was no longer really useful compared to a professionally made PCB with plated vias/holes, multilayer, solder mask, micro detail, reliability and quality, surface finish (ENIG) and all the other benefits. Waiting a week for a pcb is really not an issue, if you plan your project accordingly, and doing proper simulation and reviews of a design to have fewer errors or failures is worth more than trying to crank out 3 hardware-iterations in a week before you get a working design. I guess this technique here is still useful for some, and probably quite cost effective when you compare it to getting a good resolution 2D printer that can print highly opaque films and an UV lamp for pcb exposure with a vacuum pump.
I agree with what you say though I'd suggest that the cheapness and availability of rapid prototyping actually pushes the home stuff even further into least-effort territory. So laser printer-transfer paper or stripboards.
I think I am one of the 'some' that it is useful for as 1. I wait way more than a week average maybe 4 weeks, 2. postage costs are several times more than the cost of the boards 3. if i optimise for single side SMT then no holes 4. hobbiest use so low volume and my time is mine but for the rest I agree.
In addition you might have to wait for the actual components to arrive if you are building something non-basic stuff. The fab can source and assemble them which cuts down the time difference.
Such a simple concept with awesome results! Most of these machines are capable of displaying their logos during LCD testing so I wonder how you could just get images into it like that vs having to make a negative STL. Would greatly speed up the process, but unlikely to see with chitubox systems :(
Time to open one up and get hacking..I'm sure we could come up with some open-source replacement firmware. Too bad I don't have one or I'd be down to tear it down and experiment.
Inability to use 3rd party slicing software is a total deal breaker for some of us getting a printer. Related, One of my favorite 3D modeling programs, POVray, is totally not designed to output meshes, but is not overly difficult for producing a series of slice images that could be processed for an SLA printer accepting an open slicer standard.
I've seen that in videos but I don't think any of mine do it, they just show a solid rectangle. That rectangle is probable still an image file that could be replaced though.
In the past, when I was still dealing with single-sided PCBs, this would have been a great technique. I then used sheets of overhead paper and a good laser printer to make transparencies and lay them over my PCB boards so that I could expose them. Meanwhile, with the current CPUs that we use, even double-sided PCBs are often not good enough anymore, and I use multilayer PCBs. For this, you cannot go with hobby equipment (unfortunately) and you have to go to PCB factories that can usually make a PCB within 2 days. But for anyone who needs a single-sided print, this is a great solution. Thank you for showing.
If you're able to line them up perfectly, you could do double-sided boards as well. But unless you want to go through the process of plating through-holes, you'll have to settle for making vias by soldering a short section of wire between the two sides, and either use rivets for the actual through-holes, or add the aforementioned vias next to them so it doesn't matter which side the components are soldered to.
@@chriskwakernaat2328 if you're printing a jig and have standard sized boards, you can easily layer boards, use thinner single sided boards, with a double sided base board and drill alignment holes, and you can easily stack them with a layer of epoxy, though you need to drill bigger holes to solder the vias, which would be the main pain point. If you don't mind a thicker board you can use rivets for the through holes, and 3d print a spacer to hold the rivet heads.
One tip on sodium hydroxide: I would generally suggest sourcing food-grade sodium hydroxide/lye rather than lab grade sodium hydroxide. Food-grade NaOH is pelletized to minimize dust, because breathing in NaOH is very bad (people can debate the need and efficacy of respirators for acrylate fumes, but no one debates that breathing in lye dust is bad). The larger granule pellets make it relatively safe to handle for kitchen uses, like making pretzels because the bigger pellet size makes it much harder to dissolve if you accidentally touch it (lye isn't caustic until it is mixed with water) and has minimal caustic dust if you handle it gently. Lab-grade NaOH might come in a different granule sizes which might not be apparent on the labelling and may be potentially more hazardous to handle, especially with respect to eye and breathing protection. The NaOH shown in the video has large grains like food-grade NaOH. No need to be super scared of this stuff, as it is commonly used in cooking for things like pretzels or noodles. Just exercise some caution.
@@tommihommi1 In the video Tom tells that he have Acetic acid on hand for emergencies with the NaOH and I think that’s not the best idea but I am not 100% shure about that.
@@Druidus98 I'd suggest having baking soda nearby to neutralize any spills. While lye is used as a drain cleaner, you should not just pour concentrated lye down the drain unless you need to clean the drain. If you don't need to clean the drain, just dilute the lye with a lot of water. FWIW I'm a chemist. Edit: I buy baking soda in bulk and keep a bag of it in my lab.
I've seen this done before, but I can see someone making a device that would be two LCDs that would sandwich the board to make 2 layer boards easy to make.
CNC mills that do double layered PCBs pretty much always use two alignment pins that go thru the pcb board to make sure both sides perfectly align when you flip the board. The problem with that is, that you have to drill these holes at the right distance with a high enough precision into the raw PCB before you start the exposure process, and you need a way to add some alignment pins to the printer. I guess if your printer has some alignment pins to hold the resin vat in place, you could maybe use them, or build a holder with alignment features out of a resin vat.
@@ellisglyou've already got the precise 3d printer. Just print a frame that screws down with the screws that normally hold the vat and use the frame as x&y stops. If you're adventurus enough, you can even print the stencil for the solder paste (if you use a slightly flexible resin i.e. tough resin.).
I strongly recommend using ground planes on your PCB designs. It's way easier to design a board with a ground plane. It also means you remove less copper, which in turn makes the chemical last longer.
@@xferme Every board I've made has a ground plane, and I didn't have any problems soldering to any of them without a solder mask. Maybe it's not the same case for SMD components; I've only ventured as far as THT, so far.
If you're doing it professionally then 4 layer with 2x signal and ground+power planes is what I'd suggest as a minimum for anything that isn't completely basic, which obviously is not possible using this method. Not just for making routing easier but for EMC compliance it's much easier as well. You still have to know what you're doing though, but not as much. When I was first playing around with 2 layer opamp boards I remember introducing error where the high gain opamps amplified the poor return path impedance where I was weaving top-bottom layers. So for serious prototyping, no I would never do this. It's just a hobby thing.
I made my firsts PCBs 30 years ago drawing them with a sharpee whishing for something better. The time have come. This video is a great out the the box idea that will keep me thinking for some time. GREAT, GREAT, GREAT!!!!
For real!! I am ashamed I did not even consider it before now, and surprised no one else published the idea sooner! So simple. So obvious, yet completely blinded to it until now! Genius!
@@Inertia888 lots of people have had this idea for years I was to attempt it with another guy 5 years ago already but this UV equipment was not yet widely available.
I used to make my PCBs 30 years ago with this methode. So this is not new or some thing special! U can use a normal UV Lamp. Today, i more like to use a CNC drill to make it, about it save the chemicals. Or if you need realy professional PCB, then look at a company how make it. especial if you use more as 2 layers.
There are a few other options to check into as well, like tried and true Laser toner (I've done that and it worked well for me). Also someone modified a laser printer that apply toner directly on boards and then used acetone vapor to fix it. Laser printers can make larger boards. The method shown in this video of using a budget MSLA printer is very cool though!
Always add "copper pour" to your boards that you are making with this method because it dramatically reduces the amount of copper needed to remove during etching (and with it the amount of chemicals used and fumes released). It is very easy to do, and can also serve as a ground plane so it makes board design easier.
But if you get industrial opto coupling interface large copper pour areas on the board is danger for the insulation especially if your project contains igbt or scr connected at power sources fairly different voltages of the logics supply .
@@satipsrl5207 Those boards should be designed as two separate boards and you can add copper pour only on one side or on both, but with different amount of clearance. There should also be a zone that goes under optocouplers that has no copper at all, and also it is common to put cuts in the PCB along that zone
This brings back memories of university and using a Lazer printer and trasparencies for making masks and a UV tube with a glass bed to expose them. I remember fixing mistakes with a black marker on the transparency or a sharp knife to scratch off the printing. This is a cool method.
This is a great idea! I've done many PCBs with the toner transfer method, but it does struggle a bit on smaller features. One suggestion - when using a small etch batch, you get a faster and better etch by removing less copper. Just use flood fills on most/all of the board. You can also make your fill a ground plane, which can help simplify routing and improve signal integrity or thermal performance in some cases as well.
Im looking at dry photoresist. Also there is a spray on solder mask that you can solder to before its cured. So you can tin the PCB and then spray on the mask. Then solder each area you want a clean pad. Then UV the whole lot and drill the holes.
FINALLY! I told people 2 years ago to use their resin printer with photoresist film. Great demo! I've made small silkscreen masks this way too! You can make the circuitboard and some artwork for the enclosure onthe same machine. That in itself is a boon for any small maker/tinker. I've been expecting someone to put a Chitu board in a flatbed scanner body tbh.
Hey Thomas. I'm a student at the EPFL in Switzerland, in micro engineering (micritechnique) and I've studied and worked in cleanroom this semester. We have studied microfabrication technologies and so wafer fabrications. If you want, we can discuss this out and try to figure out how to work with your resin to make home-made photoresist film for pcb manufacturing at home. Tell me if you are interested
Hallo Neizo, es gibt auch noch andere Menschen hier draußen, für die das Thema interessant wäre, wenn Ihr das out-figuren könntet. Wäre toll, wenn Du dann Deinen eigenen TH-cam-Kanal gründen würdest und das Ergebnis Eurer Recherche / Forschung der Öffentlichkeit vorstellen würdest. Viele Grüsse
This is a nice idea. I use positive 20 because it's cheaper than than pre-coated boards (just needs a bit of spray-painting skill). To make big boards you would need a big resin printer, though. But it's real quick. I currently start with a PDF of my tracks that I have printed on tracing paper. Then I sandwich the paper between the coated PCB and a thick piece of perspex. That goes in the sun (after a couple of test exposures to get the time right as sunlight is always changing). I get pretty good results. Suitable for prototyping.
Had an idea about doing this with my original Anycubic resin printer some years back and never quite got round to testing it. Thanks for putting the hard work in, and getting this out there :) Its evidently way easier & more reliable than the pain of Toner transfer from laser printed gloss paper ;)
I was going to go through the process of ordering PCB's for a thing at work that I wanted to play with, but this is much more in line with trying stuff out, perfectly timed video!
The best description for this method is 'rapid prototyping'. It lets you get your design down perfectly before you send it off to a board fab for bulk manufacture.
I'm still fiddling about in FDM land but I've been wondering about this ever since a few friends got the Mars 1 & none of them have been willing to try it yet. Nice to know it actually does work! I figured there'd be no real reason why it wouldn't.
If I’m not mistaken, I think you can also use UVTools to import/replace a layer with an image. So potentially you could turn the tracks into an image with the same pixel dimensions of the printers LCD and drop that into an existing sliced file (and tweak the exposure times)?
Nice idea that has real possibilities, even for double-sided boards. Great for those of us that are at the end of the world (NZ :) ) and waiting for JLCPCB / PcbWay takes over a week at the best of times.
I'm glad that somebody did this! I think that is one of the best methods to do pcb etching. I'd like to build a device that does the same thing, without the 3d printer stuff.
That is a quite genius method. Getting good quality films is always a bit of a hassle, even when using a laser printer. Think I finally found an excuse to buy a resin printer.
Brilliant Thomas. I have the Mars 2 Pro, and an older i3 Wanhao clone that I also setup with multiple toolheads (FDM, CNC Drill to 1.5mm, CNC Engrave - sharpened 8mm stainless rod drag style). I have a bag of single sided 0.8mm PCB blanks. Was going to try a simple project like making a multi-layered Arduino or something to prove the 3D printers can do multilayer PCB's. I think the key will be layer alignment, and this can be done with first using the dremel and those small drill bits like 0.6mm. FlatCAM was made for making PCB's, has many options like drill depths for CNC drilling gcode a 3D printer with Marlin can understand.
BTW you can just draw the circuits with a permanent maker on a transparent film and use that as mask for the pcbs if you have nothing else. My cousin used to do exactly this in the late 80's he started using a sharpie to draw the pcbs, and when he could afford it, he bought an XT PC ( no mouse, no HDD for the first year) and an EPSON dot matrix printer (this was the first PC I ever handled btw) and with a DOS software to draw PCBs ( they looked identical to the ones you show in the vid), he would print the PCB layouts in normal paper, then he would take the prints to a place they photocopied the prints into a Transparent film, and since it was toner ink on the photocopier it was super opaque, and then used these film prints for the photo etching of the pcbs. Eventually he bought an HDD and a genius mouse, At that time he used to build the electronics and antennas for FM radio stations, and he was a 24 year old college dropout xD.
Silicate based developers are much nicer to use than hydroxide - much bigger margin between "develop" and "strip", less temperature dependent and made-up solution lasts almost forever
Inspired from your video, I tried the same using KiCAD and FreeCAD and I have to say after some try-and-error it worked out very well. I can confirm that the PCBs are crispy and I'm happy to finally skipped this boring step with printing on a transparent foil :D
Hi 2bbionic - can you help to provide the steps you have followed to get the stl file with KiCAD and FreeCAD combination, I tried and failed and hopeless now ! Can you help.
You got me super excited because I have a ton of negative resist boards. Where UV light hardens the resist, your method would be perfect as I no longer have to make exposure masks. I like negative resists because I can use sodium carbonate to develop the boards a less caustic solution.
Been doing this since I got my first MSLA. But you have to watch the exposures near the edges. On most consumer MSLA printers (Prusa's SL1 excepted) there is a significant drop off in exposure near the edges (it actually starts as soon as you get off center). I've gotten around this by creating my PCB layouts in 3D with depth, then a bool layer trims them down in the Z radially so that as more and more layers get exposed less and less of the center gets exposed. Instead one exposure the printer fractionally goes through about 8, each time including less and less of the center. Now traces at the edges are the same thickness as the center with no under exposure. Very clean, no almost opaque laser printed masks, and because you don't have the print plate getting in the way you can put an alignment system on the stage and do double sided board in perfect registration.
I am trying to make PCB using same technique, but tracks on the photoresist film seems foggy(poor resolution) after exposure to uv light. Do you know how can this issue be resolved?
How large are the traces? There is only so much resolution on the LCD for masking, but even then you can get them pretty fine. How long are you exposing for? What are you using to develop the photoresist? Depending on which machine you have and what kind of light engine is inside (and what kind of lenses) you may need to put a UV transparent diffuser film right on the LCD glass to even out the light.
Wow, fantastic idea! Even an entry-level resin printer would be adequate for a lot of hobby-level boards, and a mid-sized one would be plenty big enough for most anything a typical maker would need to do on a quick-turn basis. (I also second the tip below about using iron-on photoresist film.) Another thought: A 3D-printed jig could help you align the boards accurately enough to do double-sides ones repeatably.
I'm waiting for a new preordered FDM printer to arrive and this has me looking at resin printers for this purpose. Could come in really handy to finish a car lighting project. I've had a couple orders of boards so far, but I'm going to need a few more one off boards to finish it up.
Very nice. I have a laser engraver and I did some PCBs by painting it with permanent marker and laser the tracks away. then acid and it's done! Like what you were trying to do with the resin directly on the PCB. Also works very well and gets very fine results... depending on the laser's resolution. But 90 seconds for a "big" board is faster than the 4 minutes of my highest resolution small board... but anyway, is also fast that order it from China! The best solution, in my case was to "laser" the circuit first to have a reference for the holes, drill the holes, clean the paint and redo the laser without holes in the drawing, to make sure tiny misalignments in the drill press get the copper to the hole, and only then, acid the extra copper away! Also, with the holes already done, it's very easy to alight a two layer design.
I have had good success simply using bare copper PCBs and using UV cure resin itself to make the etching mask. Bare copper is cheaper than the UV resist mask coated PCB material. All I do is scuff up the copper with a scrubbing pad and print the mask about 1mm thick, using resin directly on the copper, then I etch it. The reason I print the mask so thick is that I then use it as a drill alignment tool. The 1mm mask makes it effortless to drill the holes exactly in the right positions because the mask has "pilot holes" where the drill will go. You have to be careful removing the mask, because it can pull up the traces, but I find that I can pick most of it off and sand off the remnants. I hope you will give this method a try and let me know if you have success! Cheers!
@@andersdoverud9046 I was dialing in the process and was afraid of wasting time drilling holes if I did it first and then messed up the etch. I waiting until I had a bunch of good etched boards and then drilled them. But I think it would work either way. Probably it would be a little cleaner if drilled first.
This is so good! Thanks so much for putting this out! A F360 question, @10:55, how did you do the subtract? I extruded the rectangle and then one by one my copper pieces (so a lot), extruded those and then did a number of subtracts and it worked but Im hoping someone can point me a tutorial or how they do that without so much fiddling. I couldnt/cant figure out how to group the copper into one piece to be the cutting tool...???
Interesting technique. Last time I etched a board at home, I used the toner transfer method and etched in a muratic acid/hydrogen peroxide solution. It worked pretty well. Used the same solution to etch some brass sheets to make custom playing cards for a steampunk Gambit cosplay too.
Thanks for this! I had the same idea, but had no idea what exposure time should be. I'll still do some tests to dial in the perfect time for my specific printer and film, but this gave me a much-needed point of reference to start from!
I study electrical enigneering and this kinda blew my mind. 300 dollars and i can make good enough pcbs from home that takes serveral hours in my univeristys pcb lab🤯 Thanks for great content!
Awesome! Have you tried coating the board with a thinned (or even full thickness) coat of resin then use a blow dryer to dry it? It should self level and even if it's a little tacky, cure it as you demonstrated. You should be able to get the coating thickness down to .005 inches (.12 mm) and then I would think it might etch. I am going to order one of the 8k flat panel printers today for my protyping. This makes the purchase a real no-brainer as I sometimes have to make custom boards for customers. My current resin printer is a projection type and am not sure its masking is as effective as the flat panel. I have to be very careful with exposure times or I get a lot of bleed around on the print causing it to go oversize and lose detail. Thank you for the AWESOME idea!!!!
I was wondering why no one on this platform was covering the fact that resin printer have high precision UV LED screen that can be used for photoresistive pcb enraving.... You did it thanks ! The only default here is that the UV light is not straight it comes from a single centered point that will affect the trace angles.
If you want to try the 3d goo as a resist you could try diluting and thinning with a compatible solvent and spin coating it on a plain pcb. It looks like it's a 10x - 100x too thick. Also if the lye is too finicky with timing sensitivity maybe try sodium metasilicate pentahydrate it may be more controllable. Also pretty sure you can get positive or negative uv resists to avoid a step for the image.
I bet, that apart from PCB layouts, it could be used to etch brass solder kits and clichees for tampon printing. Remember that really fine print on model railroad models? They're made with these. Thank you so much for your video. You gave me a lot of ideas.
Just started watching your video. As a soap-maker I can tell you that your plastic containers are fine for NaOH (Sodium hydroxide). The thing you really want to avoid (and it is pretty counter-intuitive, or I always thought it was) is GLASS. NaOH will etch glass and your container will, eventually, break. I'm not sure about lab equipment which isn't made from silicon (it's made from quartz glass) but, again, as a soap-maker (I've gone through a LOT of NaOH. It's what makes fats into soaps. Which is not at all the same thing as the detergents that are called 'soap' by most people. There is also KOH, potassium hydroxide, which is for 'soft' soaps. Both are called, "lye," but I digress...) Yes, pour your excess lye down your drain. It's not going to hurt anything. It will NOT harm your PVC pipes. That said, I wouldn't know what to do with lye that is contaminated with whatever chemicals get added to it from the photo-resist layer (I'm a soap-maker not a chemist). That's a whole 'nother animal and you should do your own research on that. Lye, by itself, is probably less environmentally hazardous than some of the drain-cleaners you can buy at the grocery store. All of that said: LYE IS DANGEROUS! It absolutely WILL eat you if you get it on you. Fragrance oils are pretty nasty, too. Ask me how I know that one...
I would still check with the local recycling station and try to bring any chemicals to them for disposal, and not just flush it down the drain. The sewage system operators will thank you, as every chemical that you throw at them could cause reactions with other materials/chemicals and eventually will need to be neutralized and removed again from the water somehow. If you can easily avoid adding more unnecessary contamination into the sewage system, you should always try that option first.
@@SandeepKumar-jj7zi, pellets are probably fine. As long as you don't get them wet. Once you mix them with water to make the lye it will etch glass. Of course, it also depends on the concentration of the lye. Lye for soap is pretty highly concentrated. Also, it's an exothermic reaction. In simple terms, it gets hot. It can get surprisingly hot, really. The fumes are pretty nasty, too. The long and the short of it is that lye is quite dangerous and if you don't respect it you're going to get hurt. Maybe in a permanent way.
That's what those little cnc's are good for. Even allows you to drill the through holes. Even one of those give away sample printers can be converted and use one of those small 60 watt spindles. Even better is using a diode laser for the copper part then drill.
The resin on top of the copper at 8:59 looks like something one would see in a decay-punk "Museum of the Ancients". Even if it's not effective as far as making PCBs I love the look.
I am making my boards like this for over 2 years (as Fusion 360 added electronics to their setup) You do not have to move from eagle to F360 as you have Eagle in F360 already. Another way (a little faster) if you have transparent foil and ink printer - you may turn your printer in test mode to turn screen on and mask it with print from eagle on foil directly.
Interesting idea.... I love this. I wonder if you could use one of the old LCD panels that they made for overhead projectors and mount a UV light under it. It would greatly increase your PCB size, If it was capable of blocking enough UV.
This is a really slick idea. I see lots of comments on toner transfer being better. For large or medium boards, if you already have a laser printer, that's probably true. But for little tiny boards, for small surface mount projects? This looks great. I'm betting the resolution of this direct process is high, and it would work great for 2 or 3 cm boards, that would just be cumbersome toner transfer. Thanks!
You could potentially also use the PCB exposure tool in the program UV tools to create .ctb files from gerber files, which any PCB software should have no issue saving as, avoiding creating 3D stls for chitubox or lychee.
Cool video! Worth noting: NaOH is super staticky. When pouring from plastic container to plastic container, the little beads pickup a charge and might shoot out of the containers onto you, your clothes or anywhere else. Since they're dry its not as dangerous... unless a pet licks it up or a bead flings into your eyeball. Stay safe, y'all
Back in the 90s we were taught how to make PCBs at school. You draw the traces on the computer (Acorn Archimedes!) And then print them on the laser printer. You put this and the special photo resist PCB blank into the tiny little UV PCB sunbed and expose. Then you put the PCB blank into the etch bath with its hot vibrating acid. Wash it off, buff it with wire wool and drill the pads with the 1mm bit in the drill press. Good Times.
This got me thinking. As someone that has etched photos onto PC boards 10+ years ago I wonder how hard it would be to modify an old resin printer (I have one I never use) and instead of sending it STL files to change the electronics to just send a picture (the screens were designed for this after all) and just use it to display an image and use a timer to turn the LED's off and on. Instant custom PC exposure machine.
Alternative for etching the board use citric acid (they sell bags of this like sugar, very cheap) , pinch of salt and hydrogen peroxide (as strong as you can get, 10% is around good for etching). Good thing is you can reuse this solution by adding more hydrogen peroxide and salt. When you are going to dispose the solution heat the liquid until all water boils, and then burn the green crystal until they turn green brown. that is copper oxide and is mostly inert.
I wonder, why wasn't he using ferric chloride? That's just a salt of iron, not too dangerous or expensive, and also if I've heard correctly, infinitely "rechargeable".
As it has already been mentioned in comments, my perfect and easy solution is toner transfer via iron, hydrogen peroxide + cirtine acid mixture. The main secret is usage of magazine paper sheet instead of a regular office paper. Magazine one is much smother and toner doesn't stick into too hard.
Actually you can do i pretty well on FDM printer, Just use sanding paper to sand laminate a little bit, clean with high quality alcohol, then just print paths as a first layer on the board using PLA filament, etch the board, and youre ready to go, the last thing you have to do is to remove PLA from soldering point, do not remove it from paths - you have ready soldermask, just paint he board. Instead of PLA you can use some kind of wax filament - then just put it into hot water and all of the filament comes of.
I've made circuit boards for decades from using sticker sheets to the photo methods. That is really slick, been debating on a resin printer to go with my FDM but now I am sure I am getting one ! Just watched another channel where he made a custom connector using a resin printer, for once YT is nudging me the right directions.
1y ago but consider looking into DIY to avoid unnecessary entry costs. A laser on an FDM nozzle mount and a resin chamber on the print bed mount functions in theory like a slightly lower resolution resin printer as long as you run some kind of microcontroller connection to the laser for wattage modulation.
Technically you can spin coat the resist on the copper board, by mounting the copper board on a spinning motor (1000rpm or more), and then bake anywhere between 50 and 150 according to resist specs, and then you should be able to use it as a precoated PCB
Wow, things have sure come a long way since my electronics class in high school over 30 years ago where we used Q-tips and nail polish to create very rudimentary PCBs (no where near the resolution of this obviously)
This is the best idea since sliced bread! I wonder how fast you can make a simple double sided PCB if you already have a CNC to drill the holes, and use rivets for through hole conductivity?
I see other people mentioned sodium carbonate as a less caustic option for developing. Try insead sodium silicate. Less caustic and also easier to use with process variation.
Excellent and innovative idea to make PCBs, I’m starting on this journey and starting learning fusion , I have progress and have my board but for the life of me , how do I get from fusion to stl image for the printer , I have tried all formats and online conversions but either quality or scale or missing components are always creeping in, would appreciate if you or other viewers here can bridge that process for me . I have a personal use version of fusion and using photon any cubic saw for the printer , thanks
I had tried use the FDM 3d printer + laser engraving head to do the same thing, but the idea that use the LCD Resin 3d printer is better way, It's extremely fast,only minute can finish the exposure process, thanks for your sharing!
Dry-film photoresist is the solution you need. It comes in thin blue film that you can iron on copper-cladded board (not the solder mask paste). The exposed photoresist turns darker and hardens while unexposed part dissolves in alkaline solution (sodium carbonate). It's much cheaper than presensitized UV PCB, and can be removed & reapplied if something goes wrong during exposure.
can you explain more? so once ironed and process is done you can solve in sodium carbonate and then run in etcher?
@@maevebaksa yes
Yep, and you can use vinegar plus hydrogen peroxide and table salt to etch which is much friendlier.
@@maevebaksa the dry-film photoresist can be ironed on the copper-clad board with lowest heat setting or using a laminator.
After exposure, develop the board with sodium carbonate solution, use a soft bristle toothbrush to clean the traces.
I use old-school ferric chloride for etching. The etchant is heated on Ender 3 bed and some gcode to agitate the etchant.
The cured photoresist can be clean off with acetone or let the board sit in sodium hydroxide solution. I also found that the cured photoresist peels off in IPA, while uncured photoresist dissolves in IPA.
Best thing about dry-film is if anything goes wrong during exposure you can just remove it and reapply the film. With presensitized PCB you only have one chance.
@@yonggor .
OMFG.... I've been looking for a way to do this for months and the solution was in front of my face, on my desk this whole time! Thank you so much for this!!!!!!
This takes me back 50 years when I was a teenager making pcbs in the bathroom by exposing boards with a sun tanning lamp. In hindsight I had lots of failures mostly because I was spraying the Kodak liquid resist. The resulting coating thickness was not uniform enough requiring different exposure times across the board, basically clean off the resist and try again. As I recall the Kodak literature recommended spinning the board to produce a uniform film thickness. The copper surface also needed to be insanely clean before attempting resist coating. If the resin printer UV light source is columnated consider spin coating before placing the coated board on the printer. This way the flatness of the board will not be a factor.
Cheers-Peter
I did the same thing. A buddy of mine found an old home sun tanning lamp. Used to make my own and copied a commercial guitar effects pedals. I used tape and overhead plastic to make the masks.
I imagine that for prototyping and small scale fabrication, this is kind of a game changer.
Not yet.
But for some really simple shcemes - yes
Example: Using a resin printer and this technique... I wonder how many little button cells disposable flashlights you could make in an afternoon?
@@StevenIngram a lot, but less than by making them with iron and printed paper, but for prototyping is superior in terms of effort.
That result is actually pretty nice.
I've been doing prototype PCBs for our company for a long time, but we cleaned out that pcb-prototype-lab a few years ago. It just was no longer really useful compared to a professionally made PCB with plated vias/holes, multilayer, solder mask, micro detail, reliability and quality, surface finish (ENIG) and all the other benefits. Waiting a week for a pcb is really not an issue, if you plan your project accordingly, and doing proper simulation and reviews of a design to have fewer errors or failures is worth more than trying to crank out 3 hardware-iterations in a week before you get a working design.
I guess this technique here is still useful for some, and probably quite cost effective when you compare it to getting a good resolution 2D printer that can print highly opaque films and an UV lamp for pcb exposure with a vacuum pump.
I agree with what you say though I'd suggest that the cheapness and availability of rapid prototyping actually pushes the home stuff even further into least-effort territory. So laser printer-transfer paper or stripboards.
I think I am one of the 'some' that it is useful for as 1. I wait way more than a week average maybe 4 weeks, 2. postage costs are several times more than the cost of the boards 3. if i optimise for single side SMT then no holes 4. hobbiest use so low volume and my time is mine but for the rest I agree.
In addition you might have to wait for the actual components to arrive if you are building something non-basic stuff. The fab can source and assemble them which cuts down the time difference.
Such a simple concept with awesome results! Most of these machines are capable of displaying their logos during LCD testing so I wonder how you could just get images into it like that vs having to make a negative STL. Would greatly speed up the process, but unlikely to see with chitubox systems :(
Time to open one up and get hacking..I'm sure we could come up with some open-source replacement firmware. Too bad I don't have one or I'd be down to tear it down and experiment.
Gerber files are just a zip file of all the layers as bitmap. You can export them in eagle via the manufacturing tab.
Inability to use 3rd party slicing software is a total deal breaker for some of us getting a printer. Related, One of my favorite 3D modeling programs, POVray, is totally not designed to output meshes, but is not overly difficult for producing a series of slice images that could be processed for an SLA printer accepting an open slicer standard.
@@BloopTube Can you still? I thought chitubox said they were going to change the firmware only accept files signed by the official slicer.
I've seen that in videos but I don't think any of mine do it, they just show a solid rectangle. That rectangle is probable still an image file that could be replaced though.
In the past, when I was still dealing with single-sided PCBs, this would have been a great technique. I then used sheets of overhead paper and a good laser printer to make transparencies and lay them over my PCB boards so that I could expose them.
Meanwhile, with the current CPUs that we use, even double-sided PCBs are often not good enough anymore, and I use multilayer PCBs. For this, you cannot go with hobby equipment (unfortunately) and you have to go to PCB factories that can usually make a PCB within 2 days.
But for anyone who needs a single-sided print, this is a great solution. Thank you for showing.
If you're able to line them up perfectly, you could do double-sided boards as well. But unless you want to go through the process of plating through-holes, you'll have to settle for making vias by soldering a short section of wire between the two sides, and either use rivets for the actual through-holes, or add the aforementioned vias next to them so it doesn't matter which side the components are soldered to.
3dprint a jig , and you can do doublesided with no alignment problems. multilayer is ofcourse out of reach at home.
@@chriskwakernaat2328 if you're printing a jig and have standard sized boards, you can easily layer boards, use thinner single sided boards, with a double sided base board and drill alignment holes, and you can easily stack them with a layer of epoxy, though you need to drill bigger holes to solder the vias, which would be the main pain point.
If you don't mind a thicker board you can use rivets for the through holes, and 3d print a spacer to hold the rivet heads.
One tip on sodium hydroxide: I would generally suggest sourcing food-grade sodium hydroxide/lye rather than lab grade sodium hydroxide.
Food-grade NaOH is pelletized to minimize dust, because breathing in NaOH is very bad (people can debate the need and efficacy of respirators for acrylate fumes, but no one debates that breathing in lye dust is bad). The larger granule pellets make it relatively safe to handle for kitchen uses, like making pretzels because the bigger pellet size makes it much harder to dissolve if you accidentally touch it (lye isn't caustic until it is mixed with water) and has minimal caustic dust if you handle it gently.
Lab-grade NaOH might come in a different granule sizes which might not be apparent on the labelling and may be potentially more hazardous to handle, especially with respect to eye and breathing protection.
The NaOH shown in the video has large grains like food-grade NaOH. No need to be super scared of this stuff, as it is commonly used in cooking for things like pretzels or noodles. Just exercise some caution.
This is very useful information, thanks for sharing!
Would you agree that neutralizing NaOH with Acetic Acid CH3CCOH is not the best Idea?
you don't need to neutralize lye, you just pour it down the drain. It's literally drain cleaner.
@@tommihommi1 In the video Tom tells that he have Acetic acid on hand for emergencies with the NaOH and I think that’s not the best idea but I am not 100% shure about that.
@@Druidus98 I'd suggest having baking soda nearby to neutralize any spills. While lye is used as a drain cleaner, you should not just pour concentrated lye down the drain unless you need to clean the drain. If you don't need to clean the drain, just dilute the lye with a lot of water.
FWIW I'm a chemist.
Edit: I buy baking soda in bulk and keep a bag of it in my lab.
I've seen this done before, but I can see someone making a device that would be two LCDs that would sandwich the board to make 2 layer boards easy to make.
@@s16e559 thinking about this, you would need some sort centering clamp.
@@s16e559 yes, a jig. Used frequently in CNC milling for 2+ operations on a part.
CNC mills that do double layered PCBs pretty much always use two alignment pins that go thru the pcb board to make sure both sides perfectly align when you flip the board. The problem with that is, that you have to drill these holes at the right distance with a high enough precision into the raw PCB before you start the exposure process, and you need a way to add some alignment pins to the printer. I guess if your printer has some alignment pins to hold the resin vat in place, you could maybe use them, or build a holder with alignment features out of a resin vat.
@@ellisglyou've already got the precise 3d printer. Just print a frame that screws down with the screws that normally hold the vat and use the frame as x&y stops.
If you're adventurus enough, you can even print the stencil for the solder paste (if you use a slightly flexible resin i.e. tough resin.).
I strongly recommend using ground planes on your PCB designs. It's way easier to design a board with a ground plane. It also means you remove less copper, which in turn makes the chemical last longer.
It’s harder to solder without the mask if you have ground plains. This is for prototyping and fast iteration.
@@xferme Every board I've made has a ground plane, and I didn't have any problems soldering to any of them without a solder mask. Maybe it's not the same case for SMD components; I've only ventured as far as THT, so far.
If you're doing it professionally then 4 layer with 2x signal and ground+power planes is what I'd suggest as a minimum for anything that isn't completely basic, which obviously is not possible using this method. Not just for making routing easier but for EMC compliance it's much easier as well. You still have to know what you're doing though, but not as much. When I was first playing around with 2 layer opamp boards I remember introducing error where the high gain opamps amplified the poor return path impedance where I was weaving top-bottom layers. So for serious prototyping, no I would never do this. It's just a hobby thing.
First saw this method on Huygens Optics channel and was shocked that this wasn't more common! Such a clever use of MSLA printers!
This is so underrated. Compared to any other DIY process, this is clean and relatively easy. Just WOW!
I made my firsts PCBs 30 years ago drawing them with a sharpee whishing for something better. The time have come. This video is a great out the the box idea that will keep me thinking for some time. GREAT, GREAT, GREAT!!!!
Omg this is brilliant!!! So happy someone tried this and that it actually worked
For real!!
I am ashamed I did not even consider it before now, and surprised no one else published the idea sooner!
So simple. So obvious, yet completely blinded to it until now!
Genius!
@@Inertia888 lots of people have had this idea for years I was to attempt it with another guy 5 years ago already but this UV equipment was not yet widely available.
I used to make my PCBs 30 years ago with this methode. So this is not new or some thing special! U can use a normal UV Lamp. Today, i more like to use a CNC drill to make it, about it save the chemicals. Or if you need realy professional PCB, then look at a company how make it. especial if you use more as 2 layers.
I feel like I've just unlocked a new skill! Very smart idea. A lot easier than printing on acetate and using a UV lamp!
I would love to see a follow-up video where you used a jig or fixture to align the PCB as well as made a 2 sided board.
That was part of the original plan, but I ran out of time for testing it.
I've been wanting something to cheaply prototype boards for a while. Very cool!
There are a few other options to check into as well, like tried and true Laser toner (I've done that and it worked well for me). Also someone modified a laser printer that apply toner directly on boards and then used acetone vapor to fix it. Laser printers can make larger boards. The method shown in this video of using a budget MSLA printer is very cool though!
You can't CHEAPLY do this.....
Always add "copper pour" to your boards that you are making with this method because it dramatically reduces the amount of copper needed to remove during etching (and with it the amount of chemicals used and fumes released). It is very easy to do, and can also serve as a ground plane so it makes board design easier.
But if you get industrial opto coupling interface large copper pour areas on the board is danger for the insulation especially if your project contains igbt or scr connected at power sources fairly different voltages of the logics supply .
@@satipsrl5207 Those boards should be designed as two separate boards and you can add copper pour only on one side or on both, but with different amount of clearance. There should also be a zone that goes under optocouplers that has no copper at all, and also it is common to put cuts in the PCB along that zone
I never saw the need for a resin printer personally, but this is awesome
What a nice accomplishment! Thank you for the tip, now the resin 3D printer sales will increase ❤️
This brings back memories of university and using a Lazer printer and trasparencies for making masks and a UV tube with a glass bed to expose them. I remember fixing mistakes with a black marker on the transparency or a sharp knife to scratch off the printing. This is a cool method.
Many thanks for this. As an old hat at doing the stencil PCB Maker style boards it's refreshing to find a new way that removes some of the steps
This is a great idea! I've done many PCBs with the toner transfer method, but it does struggle a bit on smaller features. One suggestion - when using a small etch batch, you get a faster and better etch by removing less copper. Just use flood fills on most/all of the board. You can also make your fill a ground plane, which can help simplify routing and improve signal integrity or thermal performance in some cases as well.
Im looking at dry photoresist. Also there is a spray on solder mask that you can solder to before its cured. So you can tin the PCB and then spray on the mask. Then solder each area you want a clean pad. Then UV the whole lot and drill the holes.
OMG! the usual thing that has been done for 30 years done with UV lamps! INCREDIBLE
This may be the coolest and most practical TH-cam video I have ever seen.
3D print a drill guide as well so the holes will go easier. Great video!
The divot in the copper acts as a pretty good drill guide
FINALLY! I told people 2 years ago to use their resin printer with photoresist film. Great demo!
I've made small silkscreen masks this way too! You can make the circuitboard and some artwork for the enclosure onthe same machine. That in itself is a boon for any small maker/tinker.
I've been expecting someone to put a Chitu board in a flatbed scanner body tbh.
You could use photoresist film and apply it to the plane copper. Would be a great way for model makers to make brass etching for models or dioramas.
We used photo resist spray back when I was in the school electronics club. It was kind of an acquired art to get it even though.
How do we remove air bubbles when we apply dry film to copper clad ?
Hey Thomas. I'm a student at the EPFL in Switzerland, in micro engineering (micritechnique) and I've studied and worked in cleanroom this semester. We have studied microfabrication technologies and so wafer fabrications. If you want, we can discuss this out and try to figure out how to work with your resin to make home-made photoresist film for pcb manufacturing at home. Tell me if you are interested
Hallo Neizo, es gibt auch noch andere Menschen hier draußen, für die das Thema interessant wäre, wenn Ihr das out-figuren könntet. Wäre toll, wenn Du dann Deinen eigenen TH-cam-Kanal gründen würdest und das Ergebnis Eurer Recherche / Forschung der Öffentlichkeit vorstellen würdest. Viele Grüsse
This is a nice idea. I use positive 20 because it's cheaper than than pre-coated boards (just needs a bit of spray-painting skill).
To make big boards you would need a big resin printer, though.
But it's real quick. I currently start with a PDF of my tracks that I have printed on tracing paper. Then I sandwich the paper between the coated PCB and a thick piece of perspex. That goes in the sun (after a couple of test exposures to get the time right as sunlight is always changing). I get pretty good results. Suitable for prototyping.
Had an idea about doing this with my original Anycubic resin printer some years back and never quite got round to testing it. Thanks for putting the hard work in, and getting this out there :) Its evidently way easier & more reliable than the pain of Toner transfer from laser printed gloss paper ;)
Jkdekw
I was going to go through the process of ordering PCB's for a thing at work that I wanted to play with, but this is much more in line with trying stuff out, perfectly timed video!
This is one of those "why didn't I think of that" revelations. Great job!
The best description for this method is 'rapid prototyping'. It lets you get your design down perfectly before you send it off to a board fab for bulk manufacture.
I'm still fiddling about in FDM land but I've been wondering about this ever since a few friends got the Mars 1 & none of them have been willing to try it yet. Nice to know it actually does work! I figured there'd be no real reason why it wouldn't.
Did this half a year ago, it's so easy and quick. also works for etching logos on different other metals or even mobile phone back covers
I literally thought about doing this yesterday, what is life
Today is one of the days that I thought, thank God that I subbed to your channel! This is just brilliant!!
I have no need for making PCBs but I did found it interesting. It's great to find other uses for stuff you already have.
If I’m not mistaken, I think you can also use UVTools to import/replace a layer with an image. So potentially you could turn the tracks into an image with the same pixel dimensions of the printers LCD and drop that into an existing sliced file (and tweak the exposure times)?
That would also allow processing with graphics tools to adjust trace width, which might help in some cases.
Thanks for this! this is really brilliant, another way to help when drilling the holes is creating a jig using the negative plate as a guide
Interesting approach. The results were quite good.
Nice idea that has real possibilities, even for double-sided boards. Great for those of us that are at the end of the world (NZ :) ) and waiting for JLCPCB / PcbWay takes over a week at the best of times.
I'm glad that somebody did this! I think that is one of the best methods to do pcb etching.
I'd like to build a device that does the same thing, without the 3d printer stuff.
That is a quite genius method. Getting good quality films is always a bit of a hassle, even when using a laser printer. Think I finally found an excuse to buy a resin printer.
Brilliant Thomas. I have the Mars 2 Pro, and an older i3 Wanhao clone that I also setup with multiple toolheads (FDM, CNC Drill to 1.5mm, CNC Engrave - sharpened 8mm stainless rod drag style). I have a bag of single sided 0.8mm PCB blanks. Was going to try a simple project like making a multi-layered Arduino or something to prove the 3D printers can do multilayer PCB's. I think the key will be layer alignment, and this can be done with first using the dremel and those small drill bits like 0.6mm. FlatCAM was made for making PCB's, has many options like drill depths for CNC drilling gcode a 3D printer with Marlin can understand.
BTW you can just draw the circuits with a permanent maker on a transparent film and use that as mask for the pcbs if you have nothing else. My cousin used to do exactly this in the late 80's he started using a sharpie to draw the pcbs, and when he could afford it, he bought an XT PC ( no mouse, no HDD for the first year) and an EPSON dot matrix printer (this was the first PC I ever handled btw) and with a DOS software to draw PCBs ( they looked identical to the ones you show in the vid), he would print the PCB layouts in normal paper, then he would take the prints to a place they photocopied the prints into a Transparent film, and since it was toner ink on the photocopier it was super opaque, and then used these film prints for the photo etching of the pcbs. Eventually he bought an HDD and a genius mouse, At that time he used to build the electronics and antennas for FM radio stations, and he was a 24 year old college dropout xD.
Final video of the year sounds like a big one!
Silicate based developers are much nicer to use than hydroxide - much bigger margin between "develop" and "strip", less temperature dependent and made-up solution lasts almost forever
Inspired from your video, I tried the same using KiCAD and FreeCAD and I have to say after some try-and-error it worked out very well. I can confirm that the PCBs are crispy and I'm happy to finally skipped this boring step with printing on a transparent foil :D
Hi 2bbionic - can you help to provide the steps you have followed to get the stl file with KiCAD and FreeCAD combination, I tried and failed and hopeless now ! Can you help.
You got me super excited because I have a ton of negative resist boards. Where UV light hardens the resist, your method would be perfect as I no longer have to make exposure masks. I like negative resists because I can use sodium carbonate to develop the boards a less caustic solution.
Been doing this since I got my first MSLA. But you have to watch the exposures near the edges. On most consumer MSLA printers (Prusa's SL1 excepted) there is a significant drop off in exposure near the edges (it actually starts as soon as you get off center). I've gotten around this by creating my PCB layouts in 3D with depth, then a bool layer trims them down in the Z radially so that as more and more layers get exposed less and less of the center gets exposed. Instead one exposure the printer fractionally goes through about 8, each time including less and less of the center. Now traces at the edges are the same thickness as the center with no under exposure. Very clean, no almost opaque laser printed masks, and because you don't have the print plate getting in the way you can put an alignment system on the stage and do double sided board in perfect registration.
I am trying to make PCB using same technique, but tracks on the photoresist film seems foggy(poor resolution) after exposure to uv light. Do you know how can this issue be resolved?
How large are the traces? There is only so much resolution on the LCD for masking, but even then you can get them pretty fine.
How long are you exposing for? What are you using to develop the photoresist?
Depending on which machine you have and what kind of light engine is inside (and what kind of lenses) you may need to put a UV transparent diffuser film right on the LCD glass to even out the light.
Wow, fantastic idea! Even an entry-level resin printer would be adequate for a lot of hobby-level boards, and a mid-sized one would be plenty big enough for most anything a typical maker would need to do on a quick-turn basis. (I also second the tip below about using iron-on photoresist film.)
Another thought: A 3D-printed jig could help you align the boards accurately enough to do double-sides ones repeatably.
I'm waiting for a new preordered FDM printer to arrive and this has me looking at resin printers for this purpose. Could come in really handy to finish a car lighting project. I've had a couple orders of boards so far, but I'm going to need a few more one off boards to finish it up.
This is perfect. I already tried printing with FDM printer on bare copper, but none of the filaments I have at home stick to it.
You can use thin permanent marker, it works quite well. I printed a pen holder that uses PTFE tube and 2mm wire as a linear bearing.
@@Papinak2 I have considered this option but have not designed a holder compatible with my extruder yet :)
Very nice. I have a laser engraver and I did some PCBs by painting it with permanent marker and laser the tracks away. then acid and it's done! Like what you were trying to do with the resin directly on the PCB. Also works very well and gets very fine results... depending on the laser's resolution. But 90 seconds for a "big" board is faster than the 4 minutes of my highest resolution small board... but anyway, is also fast that order it from China!
The best solution, in my case was to "laser" the circuit first to have a reference for the holes, drill the holes, clean the paint and redo the laser without holes in the drawing, to make sure tiny misalignments in the drill press get the copper to the hole, and only then, acid the extra copper away! Also, with the holes already done, it's very easy to alight a two layer design.
I have had good success simply using bare copper PCBs and using UV cure resin itself to make the etching mask. Bare copper is cheaper than the UV resist mask coated PCB material. All I do is scuff up the copper with a scrubbing pad and print the mask about 1mm thick, using resin directly on the copper, then I etch it. The reason I print the mask so thick is that I then use it as a drill alignment tool. The 1mm mask makes it effortless to drill the holes exactly in the right positions because the mask has "pilot holes" where the drill will go.
You have to be careful removing the mask, because it can pull up the traces, but I find that I can pick most of it off and sand off the remnants.
I hope you will give this method a try and let me know if you have success!
Cheers!
Drill it before you etch it.
@@andersdoverud9046 I was dialing in the process and was afraid of wasting time drilling holes if I did it first and then messed up the etch. I waiting until I had a bunch of good etched boards and then drilled them. But I think it would work either way. Probably it would be a little cleaner if drilled first.
Cool! Laser print on paper still works really well though, once tuned. I don't use film anymore. A "toy" cnc can handle the drilling.
Oooo, imagine the artistic uses of just using the lcd screen... So much more potential
This is so good! Thanks so much for putting this out! A F360 question, @10:55, how did you do the subtract? I extruded the rectangle and then one by one my copper pieces (so a lot), extruded those and then did a number of subtracts and it worked but Im hoping someone can point me a tutorial or how they do that without so much fiddling. I couldnt/cant figure out how to group the copper into one piece to be the cutting tool...???
Interesting technique. Last time I etched a board at home, I used the toner transfer method and etched in a muratic acid/hydrogen peroxide solution. It worked pretty well. Used the same solution to etch some brass sheets to make custom playing cards for a steampunk Gambit cosplay too.
Thanks for this! I had the same idea, but had no idea what exposure time should be. I'll still do some tests to dial in the perfect time for my specific printer and film, but this gave me a much-needed point of reference to start from!
I study electrical enigneering and this kinda blew my mind. 300 dollars and i can make good enough pcbs from home that takes serveral hours in my univeristys pcb lab🤯
Thanks for great content!
Awesome! Have you tried coating the board with a thinned (or even full thickness) coat of resin then use a blow dryer to dry it? It should self level and even if it's a little tacky, cure it as you demonstrated. You should be able to get the coating thickness down to .005 inches (.12 mm) and then I would think it might etch. I am going to order one of the 8k flat panel printers today for my protyping. This makes the purchase a real no-brainer as I sometimes have to make custom boards for customers. My current resin printer is a projection type and am not sure its masking is as effective as the flat panel. I have to be very careful with exposure times or I get a lot of bleed around on the print causing it to go oversize and lose detail.
Thank you for the AWESOME idea!!!!
I was wondering why no one on this platform was covering the fact that resin printer have high precision UV LED screen that can be used for photoresistive pcb enraving....
You did it thanks !
The only default here is that the UV light is not straight it comes from a single centered point that will affect the trace angles.
If you want to try the 3d goo as a resist you could try diluting and thinning with a compatible solvent and spin coating it on a plain pcb. It looks like it's a 10x - 100x too thick. Also if the lye is too finicky with timing sensitivity maybe try sodium metasilicate pentahydrate it may be more controllable. Also pretty sure you can get positive or negative uv resists to avoid a step for the image.
I bet, that apart from PCB layouts, it could be used to etch brass solder kits and clichees for tampon printing. Remember that really fine print on model railroad models? They're made with these.
Thank you so much for your video. You gave me a lot of ideas.
Just started watching your video.
As a soap-maker I can tell you that your plastic containers are fine for NaOH (Sodium hydroxide). The thing you really want to avoid (and it is pretty counter-intuitive, or I always thought it was) is GLASS. NaOH will etch glass and your container will, eventually, break. I'm not sure about lab equipment which isn't made from silicon (it's made from quartz glass) but, again, as a soap-maker (I've gone through a LOT of NaOH. It's what makes fats into soaps. Which is not at all the same thing as the detergents that are called 'soap' by most people. There is also KOH, potassium hydroxide, which is for 'soft' soaps. Both are called, "lye," but I digress...)
Yes, pour your excess lye down your drain. It's not going to hurt anything. It will NOT harm your PVC pipes. That said, I wouldn't know what to do with lye that is contaminated with whatever chemicals get added to it from the photo-resist layer (I'm a soap-maker not a chemist). That's a whole 'nother animal and you should do your own research on that. Lye, by itself, is probably less environmentally hazardous than some of the drain-cleaners you can buy at the grocery store.
All of that said: LYE IS DANGEROUS!
It absolutely WILL eat you if you get it on you.
Fragrance oils are pretty nasty, too. Ask me how I know that one...
I would still check with the local recycling station and try to bring any chemicals to them for disposal, and not just flush it down the drain. The sewage system operators will thank you, as every chemical that you throw at them could cause reactions with other materials/chemicals and eventually will need to be neutralized and removed again from the water somehow. If you can easily avoid adding more unnecessary contamination into the sewage system, you should always try that option first.
I dont know NaOH etches glass, i have stored NaOH pellets in a glass container.
@@SandeepKumar-jj7zi, pellets are probably fine. As long as you don't get them wet. Once you mix them with water to make the lye it will etch glass.
Of course, it also depends on the concentration of the lye. Lye for soap is pretty highly concentrated.
Also, it's an exothermic reaction. In simple terms, it gets hot. It can get surprisingly hot, really. The fumes are pretty nasty, too.
The long and the short of it is that lye is quite dangerous and if you don't respect it you're going to get hurt. Maybe in a permanent way.
That's what those little cnc's are good for. Even allows you to drill the through holes. Even one of those give away sample printers can be converted and use one of those small 60 watt spindles. Even better is using a diode laser for the copper part then drill.
The resin on top of the copper at 8:59 looks like something one would see in a decay-punk "Museum of the Ancients". Even if it's not effective as far as making PCBs I love the look.
I am making my boards like this for over 2 years (as Fusion 360 added electronics to their setup)
You do not have to move from eagle to F360 as you have Eagle in F360 already.
Another way (a little faster) if you have transparent foil and ink printer - you may turn your printer in test mode to turn screen on and mask it with print from eagle on foil directly.
Wow! Never think about this way of use lcd printer. Thank you, this is very useful!
That's brilliant. Seems to provide nicer results than other transfer methods.
Happy holidays, Thomas
Interesting idea.... I love this. I wonder if you could use one of the old LCD panels that they made for overhead projectors and mount a UV light under it. It would greatly increase your PCB size, If it was capable of blocking enough UV.
any LCD could work, just need to pull the backlight off of the panel. assuming it works at all....
This is a really slick idea. I see lots of comments on toner transfer being better. For large or medium boards, if you already have a laser printer, that's probably true. But for little tiny boards, for small surface mount projects? This looks great. I'm betting the resolution of this direct process is high, and it would work great for 2 or 3 cm boards, that would just be cumbersome toner transfer. Thanks!
You could potentially also use the PCB exposure tool in the program UV tools to create .ctb files from gerber files, which any PCB software should have no issue saving as, avoiding creating 3D stls for chitubox or lychee.
Cool video!
Worth noting: NaOH is super staticky. When pouring from plastic container to plastic container, the little beads pickup a charge and might shoot out of the containers onto you, your clothes or anywhere else. Since they're dry its not as dangerous... unless a pet licks it up or a bead flings into your eyeball. Stay safe, y'all
For smt prototyping of single sided boards that looks good👍🏻 And great to have a multipurpose machine!
Back in the 90s we were taught how to make PCBs at school.
You draw the traces on the computer (Acorn Archimedes!) And then print them on the laser printer.
You put this and the special photo resist PCB blank into the tiny little UV PCB sunbed and expose.
Then you put the PCB blank into the etch bath with its hot vibrating acid.
Wash it off, buff it with wire wool and drill the pads with the 1mm bit in the drill press.
Good Times.
I'm using the "(2D) laser printer transfer" method, works great, but I will give it a try with an SLA printer
Yeah I think laser is the best.
I don't do 3D printing... but you've got me interested in the idea of making board masks using an LCD... that sounds really interesting.
This got me thinking. As someone that has etched photos onto PC boards 10+ years ago I wonder how hard it would be to modify an old resin printer (I have one I never use) and instead of sending it STL files to change the electronics to just send a picture (the screens were designed for this after all) and just use it to display an image and use a timer to turn the LED's off and on. Instant custom PC exposure machine.
I'm thrilled to see this! Thank you for this Thomas!
This is very clever, especially the resin on copper pcb. I bet someone comes out with some safe purpose built resins for diy pcb’ing soon.
Oh man, that's a great implementation of a resin printer. I wish I'd thought of that for one of my clients.
Alternative for etching the board use citric acid (they sell bags of this like sugar, very cheap) , pinch of salt and hydrogen peroxide (as strong as you can get, 10% is around good for etching). Good thing is you can reuse this solution by adding more hydrogen peroxide and salt. When you are going to dispose the solution heat the liquid until all water boils, and then burn the green crystal until they turn green brown. that is copper oxide and is mostly inert.
I wonder, why wasn't he using ferric chloride? That's just a salt of iron, not too dangerous or expensive, and also if I've heard correctly, infinitely "rechargeable".
As it has already been mentioned in comments, my perfect and easy solution is toner transfer via iron, hydrogen peroxide + cirtine acid mixture. The main secret is usage of magazine paper sheet instead of a regular office paper. Magazine one is much smother and toner doesn't stick into too hard.
Very good video except I can't subtract the traces from "box"? I say a New Video showing the detailed steps would be in order and much appreciated.
Oh my word. I saw the thumbnail and immediately understood. Amazing.
Nice! Very promising. So much better than what I had to do in high school in the 80's.
Actually you can do i pretty well on FDM printer, Just use sanding paper to sand laminate a little bit, clean with high quality alcohol, then just print paths as a first layer on the board using PLA filament, etch the board, and youre ready to go, the last thing you have to do is to remove PLA from soldering point, do not remove it from paths - you have ready soldermask, just paint he board. Instead of PLA you can use some kind of wax filament - then just put it into hot water and all of the filament comes of.
I've made circuit boards for decades from using sticker sheets to the photo methods. That is really slick, been debating on a resin printer to go with my FDM but now I am sure I am getting one !
Just watched another channel where he made a custom connector using a resin printer, for once YT is nudging me the right directions.
1y ago but consider looking into DIY to avoid unnecessary entry costs. A laser on an FDM nozzle mount and a resin chamber on the print bed mount functions in theory like a slightly lower resolution resin printer as long as you run some kind of microcontroller connection to the laser for wattage modulation.
Technically you can spin coat the resist on the copper board, by mounting the copper board on a spinning motor (1000rpm or more), and then bake anywhere between 50 and 150 according to resist specs, and then you should be able to use it as a precoated PCB
this was a genius idea. I love it. Thanks.
This plus a small CNC mill and you could make some great detailed DIY pcbs.
Wow, things have sure come a long way since my electronics class in high school over 30 years ago where we used Q-tips and nail polish to create very rudimentary PCBs (no where near the resolution of this obviously)
This is the best idea since sliced bread! I wonder how fast you can make a simple double sided PCB if you already have a CNC to drill the holes, and use rivets for through hole conductivity?
I see other people mentioned sodium carbonate as a less caustic option for developing. Try insead sodium silicate. Less caustic and also easier to use with process variation.
Excellent and innovative idea to make PCBs, I’m starting on this journey and starting learning fusion , I have progress and have my board but for the life of me , how do I get from fusion to stl image for the printer , I have tried all formats and online conversions but either quality or scale or missing components are always creeping in, would appreciate if you or other viewers here can bridge that process for me . I have a personal use version of fusion and using photon any cubic saw for the printer , thanks
I had tried use the FDM 3d printer + laser engraving head to do the same thing, but the idea that use the LCD Resin 3d printer is better way, It's extremely fast,only minute can finish the exposure process, thanks for your sharing!
May I recommend Sodium Metasilicate over Sodium Hydroxide for PCB work. It’s far safer to work with and more controllable, albeit a smidge slower.
Thank you for this very great idea. Why didn’t I think of this before, it is so obvious