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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 พ.ค. 2024
- Is it the end of the atomic14 and www.PCBWay.com/?from=atomic relationship?
We're printing PCBs at home - let's see how well/if they work!
You can watch the full unedited print sequence here - • PCB Printing At Home -...
I'm using one of the Voltera machines (not a sponsor!): www.voltera.io
0:00 Introduction
0:12 Printing A PCB
0:49 Under the Microscope
1:11 Limitations
2:54 What Are We Making?
3:19 Circuit Positioning
3:38 Height Probing
3:50 Ink Calibration
4:11 Printing
4:28 Solder Paste Dispensing
5:17 Pick and Place
6:29 Reflow
6:45 Inspection
7:08 Does it work?
---
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If you'd like to help support the channel and help me buy more nonsense - I have a Patreon page: www.patreon.com/atomic14
We've also got a shop now! shop.atomic14.com
And if you're shopping on AliExpress or Amazon then if you click on these links I will get a little bit of affiliate money:
Aliexpress - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Ac05mF
Amazon - www.amazon.com/?tag=atomic14-20
You can also join us on Discord here: discord.gg/h2DDnDdjD2
There's also the Atomic14 newsletter here: atomic14.substack.com/
And don't forget about the MakerNews newsletter - makernews.substack.com/
I really liked this. Let me ask you something, can I make a microprocessor, microchip or machine such as an SSD or USB memory from scratch at home?
I would be very happy if you answer
Interesting bit of kit, but $5200 is a little much for the average hobbyist budget. I'm going to wait a couple of months until Creality knocks it off and sells it for $200.
Haha - that's my approach for most things I make - if they are any good then someone in China will make a version that's much better than I could ever do :)
that would be great if the V-one wasn't first released in like 2016 or so.
@creality get in here lol
I wish! Even as someone who works professionally with getting PCBs designed built and assembled, this thing is crazy high priced. I'd love to see a $1000-1500 version with the same functionality, then I could actually use it for prototyping.
You can use photopolymer 3d printer screen to make the same or even better pcb's for like 10+ times cheaper. Actually you dont need a full printer for pcb making, you only need a uv screen and controller, connected to pc. Soooo...yeah.. This method is interesting, but useless for real usage. And creality already have resin printers for less that 300$))
Why dont you buy a PCB mill for 20k€ to mill the prototypes then?
As someone who works in a professional manufacturing environment with sintered silver inks, surface prep is hugely important to get good bonding to the substrate. Sanding the substrate at ~200 grit then cleaning with isopropyl before printing should help a lot. There is also some benefit to doing a 2-step sinter process where you bake once as normal then do a second bake under mechanical pressure (clamp PCB between 2 pieces of jig plate metal or borosilicate glass)
Interesting - I'll try out the sanding idea. Great to get some advice from a professional.
I was just going to suggest keying the surface and degreasing but you beat me to it. My knowledge comes from painting cars but it still applies here.
Thank you for your advice. I would like to know the specific electric resistance in order to compare it to copper (17.1 mOhm mm²/m).
could you use the machine to run over the substrate using the drill bit instead of sanding?
Ah yes, back in the 80"s. Back then there existed PAY TV. Of course every engineer and technician where I worked wanted to create their own pay TV converter. I, as a technician, was self educated, and thus my approach was different. The pay TV system worked by raising the horizontal sync pulse up into the video area such that the TV could not detect it, and thus this picture was scrambled. However, the horizontal sync pulse was not touched during the vertical sync pulse. So I made a simple circuit that would check to see if the next horizontal sync pulse was in the right position or not, if not, it would make the correction. So It became a line by line correction system. Total cost for a single home made PCB and its components. was about $6.00. It required only 15 mA current at 12 Vdc. So you simply placed it within a TV converter that had volume control. Meanwhile, the engineers used the PLL method to fix the sync problem. This required lots of components and thus a complete power supply and a box to put it all within. My boss tried to then sell my design to the cable company, but they turned it down due to my design being so simple and easy to copy. Oh, and my design gave a 6 dB signal to noise ratio better performance than did the cable company decoder. They had shifted the horizontal sync pulse by dropping the RF signal strength during the horizontal pulse, by 6 dB, and then dropping the RF signal during the video section strength by 6dB at the decoder to match up again with the 6dB suppressed horizontal sync pulse. Of course my method did no RF suppressing at all, and thus the picture quality was better. . Ah, the good old days.
Desktop CNC was always my go-to for prototype pcbs. It wasn't capable of doing a PCB of typical designs, it had to be laid out differently but it did double sided no problems . Taught me how to truly layout a PCB manually instead of the software doing it for me.
I actually really enjoy PCB layout and manual routing. It's surprisingly therapeutic, like doing a nice puzzle. And it's amazingly satisfying when you get a layout that not only works, but is also ascetically pleasing.
Desktop CNC certainly seems like better value and probably also fewer limitations in the finished product. If this thing could do vias automatically, that would be a different story.
If you mark/drill alignment dowel holes, and then mirroring the bottom traces, you can print the top, flip the board and mount on the alignment dowels, then drill and solder a bit of stranded wire between the pads as via's for double sided boards. I also wonder if you squeegeed a bit of liquid solder (the SMD stuff) over the traces then re-baked it if it would pre-tin the pads/traces
Very cool and awesome development! Keep em coming!!!!
My local university had a few of those when they came out in 2018. I tested it but I could not get it to work consistently and after much complaints they are now only used to solder surface mounts. We got the Wegster-CNC machine to cut traces in stead.
That looks like an interesting machine. If I had the money I'd be tempted to get one for the PCB milling and then use the Voltera for doing the solder paste printing. All I'd need then is a pick and place machine and my factory would be operational!
This is exactly my experience caring for one of these things that lives in the Student makerspace where I work.
Yeah, we have one at work too, and we basically stopped using it, because if you don't use it daily, you get wildly inconsistent printing results and it takes so much time to get it to work each and every time. Not worth it, unfortunetaly.
You can also do this with laser printed transparencies and then standard resist and etch process. Substantially cheaper and more mechanically stable.
I would like to see if scuffing up the substrate would make the line look crisper and the header stronger.
We used to make circuit boards at school.
we would print the diagram 3 times on see through plastic and layer them together to create a black diagram light could not penetrate.
Than we put it ontop of a copper bread board and showered it with UV light (i believe), followed by a strong acid bath to remove the copper that was not in the diagram.
The solder paste dispensing. That's the part that got me. Man that's so nice. Really awesome demo video. It would be cool if there was a PCB (from copper plated fiber glass) milling machine that deposited solder paste as well. I can imagine that fabricating much better prototypes.
I'm going to try out the solder paste dispensing for my next manufactured PCB - will post a video on the extras channel to show how well it works.
Printing the traces directly on a blank board is a surprising approach. I would have thought you'd do it by printing resist onto a copper-coated board and then etching off everything else.
That would probably produce better results, but then you have all the etching chemicals and wash steps.... this approach is simpler and less toxic.
You could make the whole back of the PCB a ground and use thru-hole capacitors as bypass with one leg formed to work on a SMD pad. The idea is that the ground leg of the capacitor jumps the connection to the top of the PCB. This way there is no alignment needed. You just have to handsolder the capacitors after the reflow is done. You will need the super low temperature solder for that.
Also: If you use a zero Ohm 1206 resistor you can run a wire under it to get your layout to work.
hey thats a good idea. might be precise on the top, but the bottom is just a giant ground plane. nice i like it
Nice idea. And you're right, zero ohm resistors are all that's needed to fix any impossible routing issues. We've been spoilt by the easy access to multi-layer boards for next to nothing.
This is fantastic. I wonder how the mechanics would be if you used UV-set epoxy to reinforce the header and the pushbuttons. Since the conductors are silver, I'd add conformal coating to protect from environmental damage and oxidation.
wow man, this is amazing!
i tried really hard to use the laserjet + glossy inkjet paper + silver ink stuff technique but i just could not get it to bond right. the silver ink absorbed into the paper. i tried transparencies and even inkjet ink to try and bond / heat that but it either wiped off or the transparency just melted. i am determined to have some kinda quick positive-only PCB making method that doesnt require etching. i really like the look of this machine. it seems so much more diable than FDM printing to be honest. it has a less difficult task to do
Thks quite interesting & thinking out of the old box;
Consider a 3D printer with 2 print-heads. One head prints hot insulative plastic ; the other head prints hot conductor ; both cool semi-rigid ; & can be baked rigid/hard.
Thus any 3D conductor network can be printed embeded within an insulative substratum & component mount-points on/around its surface.
Let me know what you think.
Have you tried roughing up the board so the silver paste sticks better?
Seems good for retro enthusiasts.🥰
Is there a working projects of doing the same with 3d printer or regular cnc router?
Would be really cool if the voltera had a pick and place option to it as well.
seems like you could use the drawing as a mask for a uv sensitized board and then etch normally.
of course you could do that with a pen and a cnc machine probably cheaper.
or the uv screen of a resin 3d printer
Perhaps some sort of adhesive could be use to bond the components that need a robust mechanical connection
For components which will have mechanical loads applied, how about pre-milling the pads slightly to remove the gloss from the board and give a better key for the conductive paint?
This is good idea
I've learned to view to surface mount connectors with suspicion, and that's on normal PCBs! You should get some neutral cure silicon and stake everything down. At work, we use 3145 RTV, but that stuff is pretty expensive. You can get much cheaper neutral cure RTV at the hardware store, but I have not used it on PCBs.
When I was looking for a PCB printer, the Botfactory SV2 looked like it was the closest to what I wanted. That one also prints an non-conductive resin, so you can have multilayer boards.
Wow - the SV2 looks amazing! How does the price compare?
@@atomic14 Looks like start at $15k now. I didn't end up getting one since you are still limited to lead-free low temperature solder, and you need to do a lot of prototyping to make it worth it.
@@unknownhours I think that's the problem. It needs to be the same level at 3D printing where you can get sub $200 machines that just work.
@@atomic14There's no 3d printer at sub $200 that just work))) It might work. Or not. For printers that just work you're looking at Prusa and Bambulab at cheaper side. And 3d printing tolerances are much worse than this machine needs. It's mechanically more expensive (you can't use cheap belt drive), extruder is very complicated and precise and more importantly - the market for such machines is very small compared to market for 3d printing, so designing and supporting such a device is also much more expensive. So yeah, you won't see this machines under a $1000 either.
Interesting that the actual x-y movement is quite quick while printing, but the z movement is quite slow and there's a pause at the end of each movement before a positive z movement. I assume the pause is to reduce the sizes of holes and bumps in the printed ink. I wonder if the software has tuning for the z speed. It also looks like there could be some pretty significant efficiency optimisations that could be done, such as printing complete nets in one go rather than doing several segments and pads separately. I'm guessing that, with the way the solder doesn't wet the pads quite the same way as traditional copper pads does, solder resist isn't as important, but I don't see why they couldn't have you swap out a tube of lacquer to give you that option. Same for a "silk screen" layer which could just be a pen attachment.
Aligning a double-sided board probably wouldn't be too hard if you also had the drill attachment since you'd just need to provide two or three drill sites similar to the alignment process done for the solder paste step. Also, though I see the official video shows them inserting the via and through-hole rivets after printing, I think it'd probably be easier to do it before printing the traces and pads.
It would certainly be cool if this technology could be integrated into a pick-n-place machine for an all-in-one process where you'd stick a blank sheet of fibreglass and get a completed circuit board at the end (that'd probably have to only be single-sided, though unless you _really_ complicated matters by adding the ability for it to flip the board itself).
Hi there! What budget 3d printers do you recommend?
Would it help to sand the board before print to make the solder to stick better
A pretty neat solder past applier: I can imagine some people buying it primarily for that. No wonder it's expensive though: It has to be a wet plotter and drill in one.
With the USB port issue, couldn't you drill through the board and secure the connector to the PCB with some jumper wire or something, so there's no force exterted on the bond when inserting/removing the cable? While lining up a double-sided print would be difficult, doing some selective drilling to secure things like headers, switches etc would be easy enough?
How about mount the connector on the back of the PCB. The pins can go through holes to traces on the top surface. This would be a lost stronger than an SMD connector.
would it be worthwhile to swap this pen out for an etch resist pen and cad onto copper..?
So.... could I use my diode laser to etch glass and then use the silver ink on top to make a glass pcb?
Just a thought, but have u considered adding another step? Run a a drill over it cutting out the design b 4 laying the conductive ink, u might get stronger part adherence to the board.
Thx for the video sir
How does it add more appearance in our circuit ? Make one video on that topic .. please
No problem - glad you liked it!
why not add texture to the PBC surface? it might increase adhesion, just like print bed for 3d printer.
This is really cool! I'd love to have one
I feel very privileged to even have one. I'm very lucky to have been donated one from a friend.
Would this work with something like a cricut?
New subscriber always watching your videos many learning❤😊
Glad you are enjoying them!
I've used it at my University and I shudder every time I see one of these machines.
Milling is a thousand times better than using a Voltera.
Interesting machine but the finished boards seem like the traces would be very fragile.
I'm surprised we don't have a group of "do it yourself" guys developing a print head that could be adapted to a normal 3D printer.
We would still be at the mercy of the ink manufacturer for ink prices.
If they come up with a powdered iron mixture they could print some interesting transformer cores and electric motor hubs.
These could also then be magnetized for motors, generators and guitar pickups for example.
With a two headed printer such as a modified 3D printer we could use one head to lay down a layer of iron core for a transformer and then print the winding layer with the trace head. Cure it with a built in heater head and then print the next layer. Keep going to print complete motors for example.
I think the issue with all these machines is that the price of manufactured PCBs is so unbelievably cheap. When you can get 10 double sided boards for around $5 manufactured and shipped in less than a week there's no real incentive to try and do anything.
@@atomic14It's compelling for the same reason fast 3D printers are: rapid prototyping. Rather than a few days, you can be testing your new design after a few hours.
@@atomic14 I disagree. Moving this technology over to the common 3D printer platform would bring the cost way down and open up many avenues of development.
Currently printed circuit boards are flat. One this technology is blended with common 3D printers we will be able to print circuit boards of any shape.
The printer could have an additional head that prints out a slurry of plastic powder with UV cured glue which could then be hardened with a UV diode or UV diode laser. A slurry of powdered glass and UV hardening resin is another possibility.
On top of these layers we could print the conductive traces to be used like wires.
Those old fashioned ball ended variable tuners for early radio could easily be printed out without the need to make the hub and then wind it with wire.
Getting away from flat circuit boards; circuits would fit into watches that curve around your wrist better.
Choke coils could be drawn and printed in addition to circuit boards. The disk iron core could be printed in layers with an iron powder with UV hardening epoxy. The coil around this core would be printed in separate layers using the silver compounds or copper versions.
The current slicer software for 3D printers could easily be adapted to these concepts.
Just get a K40 laser or some other cheap laser, make some safety mods, and use that! Black spray paint goes onto Copper Clad Board, then the outline of your traces gets engraved, theb etched, and then you clean the spray paint off. Surprisingly accurate THT and SMD footprints if you are careful with the dremel when you drill it! I have been doing this for like 8 years now
how thin can you go with ya pcb boards?
mind explaining more? or maybe a video?
Nice - I've been looking at these cheap laser engravers, but so far I've held off due to safety concerns.
@atomic14 Honestly, after some limit swotches to stop the laser when the lid is open, and after getting some *approved* safety glasses for the correct wavelength (a quick google search will find them for you), and grounding it, there really isnt anything that can go wrong! The machine is honestly a lifesaver for quick prototypes and goes great alongside a 3d printer as well!
@user-tz7lk3cx1d
It Kinda Works has a great video, but he does way too much work filling in pads and such- I have found that the etching is consistent enough that you dont need much post-processing on your PCB. I do a first pass at the lowest my machine will go (~1w) at 8mm/s and then a pass at 14mm/s. Then I clean it with an old toothbrush, soap, and water. I put it into ferric chloride for 15-20min. I drill the holes with a dremel, for THT parts, and end up with a perfect PCB almost always.
what about an ender3 addition for cheap?
How well would the ink bond if you gave the G10 board a quick sanding with 400 grit before printing?
Not a bad idea.
Can you make a survey on print head construction? How to change ink/solder paste? How to change nozzles? Which solder paste and ink compatible with this print head?
great video, very interesting, thanks! only feedback is the volume seems quite low?
hmm, I'll take a look, might have messed something up in the editing.
Being able to fast prototype with SMD, the solder paste printing, and fast turnaround would be huge pluses, but the drawbacks of being single sided with no vias would rule this out for me. I’d rather pay 20e and wait, and get a professional board with cutouts, stencils, and holes. For prototyping I’ll keep using veroboard with breakout boards for SMD chips.
Agreed - I would be interested in trying out the drill attachment and the rivets - but it feels like a lot of work...
Do you mean 20 €? Is it delivered from China or you order locally?
@@swgar I live in Germany and get them from Aisler, a German company. Reasonable price and great customer service. And if you want them fast you can pay more and have them in a few days, but a couple of weeks is fine for me.
I'm still skeptical of these things, the ink is just too sloppy for anything tighter than what's shown here, and baking seemingly adds to that, plus fully exposed traces, and the soldering situation. For home kit stuff, I think using an MSLA printer works better on PCB blanks, you get a digital mask and UV lights in one step. Not to mention the cost differential, especially when this process has consumables that're (last time I looked) proprietary to the company itself. This machine just does not make sense anywhere, other than being a rapid prototyper for a large company, yet there's also better prototyping alternatives.
I'm wondering if using an abrasive on the board before you print the traces and pads on the board would make them adhere better. The surface of that board looks a lot like you're printing on glass, which would have very little binding strength.
Definitely worth a go.
Friendship ended with Pcbway. Voltera is new best friend now.
We used to do UV etching many years ago with pretty high accuracy. Does require using some acids though.
I've never actually etched my own PCBs - but it's always struck me as being potentially very messy. Having said that, I do seem to have silver ink in various unexpected places now...
@@atomic14 wasn't that bad to be honest. Also not that expensive.
@@WernerBeroux silver ink always was expensive for the results it gave me
@@atomic14 no, it's not that messy, just don't use iron chloride.
You probably can use two vias inside pads to "nail" down that usb connetor, they dont have to go anywhere, you will prob have to add real solder as a final step
I would love this machine purely for applying solder paste to existing boards so that I didn't have order stencils for every iteration of a pcb design.
Me too, next PCBs I get that aren't pre-assembled I'm going to try it out.
IMO, they really missed out on adding an attachment for a fine tipped paint marker to do silkscreen markings - it shouldn't be difficult to do considering it's the same process as their conductive ink prints except it's a different ink or using just a mechanical jig to hold a marker.
They could probably even provide a dispenser to do UV cured solder mask (not necessarily for their printed boards) since the software already has a 'homing' function so in theory an etched board with the appropriate gerber files would allow for this.
The price of the machine though... Way too steep for a hobbyist especially for those in regions where etchants are readily available (unfortunately not for me).
I can see how this might be useful for a small business specializing in producing prototypes just purely as a solder paste dispenser since they'd not need to make/ procure stencils.
I REALLY wish that you had elaboarted on the "reflow" process.....how did you heat the soldier?
bake the board in an oven? heat gun? crack pipe? barbeque?
The Voltera machine does the reflow as well.
It dispenses from a nozzle then bakes it - sounds like it would be better just to stencil an image on it with some powdered flux and then powder coat it with conductive dust (sticks to the flux) because you already have the ability to bake boards.
Then you could basically make boards in one shot processes instead of having to speed up the video 10x - faster process means less footage means less editing work too!
I'm super lazy and this also looks like a lot more effort to manage the tools and materials because they get wet with materials that cure, blegh always running against a clock or something with wet/activated materials...
But honestly if you're gonna do it this way then you should be able to use the same gantry to pick/place your parts too, especially since it already knows the board plots.
I'm surprised they haven't got a pick and place attachment - it feels like it's almost got everything to do it. It's just missing the cameras for aligning parts.
Что за жижа которой дорожки сделаны?
Might be good for basic prototyping, but I wouldn't try doing production runs with it.
I wonder if a vinyl cutter could be repurposed to make pcbs
German:
Ist es möglich ein PCB zu erstellen mit einem Resinprinter?
Man macht ein layer als rückseite, dann kommt daraum das design des PCBs in negativ und füllt alles mit flüssigem lötzinn auf und heizt es auf (resin ist ja ziemlich wärmeresistent)
Can you control that manually and freehand the traces?
It uses gerber files generated by PCB layout software, but you can draw pretty much anything into the layers.
What is resistance of 10cm trace like you done in this video ?
In that sense it looks fine. Resistance should be comparable to 30-50 μm copper, they claim 10 % resistivity of copper, 0.3-0.5 mm thick conductor looks tolerable.
Little question from a mechanic : why do you put soldering past on all esp32 points even the one that not used ? Doesn't it increase the risk of short cut without bringing any advantage ?
Thermals and mechanics: The pins are the only thing holding the chip to the board and a major path for heat to leave the silicon. SMD parts can have fairly substantial current-ratings cause they can have a direct metal-to-metal connection for cooling (given a big enough copper infill).
use allignment holes for multi layer
Very interesting, by applying 2 component clear epoxy it becomes indestructible
How did you make the plated through hold vias?
I don't have any vias on my board. But there is a drill attachment and they have small rivets that you can use to join the two sides of the board.
@@atomic14 Why don't you try with that silver paste thingy?
How about using copper plated bare pcb; cover it with acid protective paint and then remove the paint using a low power laser engraver. Finally etch it with copper etching solution. I have tried it it is cheaper and quite fast.
i had problems when i had an led on pin 2 or 4 (in not sure wich didnt work). when i wantet to upload an arduino programm in my esp32 dev board, the esp worked fine to upload on my laptop but on pc i always needet to press the boot button, but this didnt work... so the programming always timed out. it took me a while to find the problem, because i made 2 of the same boards but i used my pcb cnc. one for my friend, and one for me. my one did work without any problem,but the other board did not work and looked like it was write protected... all parts where the same only the ir recivers did came from old pcbs i salvaged. but the problem was that i had the resistors for the leds a little too small, and the tolerance in the resistors itselve did cause the problem. just used ones with higher resistance and it worked just fine.
Easily done. Sometimes it's just not obvious which pins will cause issues. The documentation always seems very clear, until you find that it's not!
A prototyping-only thing, but with the presented limitations, I can't help thinking that milling away minimal copper on a copper-clad board, would produce a much sturdier result.
That's one of the better results I've seen using conductive ink, but the limited adhesion is a sore point, I think. Maybe there's a trick to improve it, with some treatment to the board first. I'm guessing they use some kind of epoxy when they make proper PCBs.
I really wish there were better and easier ways to create low-cost circuit boards. While those Chinese manufacturers are cheap, it's not ideal.
They etch proper PCBs from copper clad fiberglass
@@silaskuemmerle2505 I'm aware of that. I was referring to how they glue the copper sheet to the fiberglass in the first place.
@@Vermilicious if I were to guess the copper sheet is probably pressed onto the fiberglass board while it’s still wet
Impressive!... How does it feel to buy such an incredible, expensive - but oh-so-beautiful - machine? I am tempted, but am experiencing guilt trips just thinking about it :-) Or did Voltera gave you one just for this review?
One of my friends bought it for a relative who sadly passed away so he offered it to me. It is a fantastic machine - but like you I could never justify purchasing one myself.
🙏
there's headers with screw holes at the end, maybe some of those are available.
When I get PCBWay to assemble USB sockets I always get ones that have through hole supports.
What about using a sla 3d printer and some photoresist PCBs
Interesting idea! But probably more hassle than it's worth - might as well just laser print onto a transparency and use that.
Question: As you know how this conductive "ink" works, do you think that this could be used, not in the machine, but using a syringe or something to fix the pads on remote controls (like for TVs and such) ???
If so, do you perhaps have a link to share of where to buy just this "ink" or other ideas?
I have a bunch of remotes that I need to fix and so far, I'm not liking any of the other methods people are using as they don't last long at all.
Thanks in advance.
That's an interesting application. I suspect the trick would be heating up the patch spots with hot air enough to set the mixture without destroying the board underneath and without damaging surrounding components.
@@tenlittleindiansAh! I wondered about that.
As I don't know exactly which "inks" are being used, I wasn't sure if it's like some of those ones that need to be heated to something like 175C. If so, then that's a no for this idea.
The rubber pads are on a rubber template and I suspect that this kind of heat, if not destroying it completely, would distort it.
OH, I should have mentioned, that to fix these remotes, all remotes, the conductive material is on rubber. Not the PCB itself.
The PCB has copper traces, usually in a spiral, interlocking pattern and the rubber pads, have the conductive material that is then pushed onto the copper contacts.
I guess these "silver" based types need the heat...... there is carbon-based conductive "paint". I won't post the name of what I found, because YT's algorithm sometimes thinks that something is spamming when it is not.
But MG (chemicals) has prods for this purpose.
I may decide to give that a try.
In case anyone wonders, the reason I need to fix these remotes, is because I can't buy brand new ones anymore. Not even for our Panasonic TVs.
I have several Logitech univ. remotes that I use for these TVs, so that's mostly what I need to fix.
Fun times.... sigh....
What I really miss was a product called, Aqua Dag, which was a conductive carbon spray that we used to use to recondition the bell part of CRTs.
I can't find that stuff anywhere now and since I changed careers, decades ago, I didn't even think to keep the stock of it that I had.... dang it! LOL
The ink that is uses needs to be heated with the following profile: 90°C for 5 minutes, then 120°C for 20 minutes.
So would probably depend on how fragile the rest of the remote is.
store.voltera.io/products/conductor-3-ink-cartridge-2ml
@@atomic14 Thanks. The heat thing does rule out this option.
Another option that is not heat dependent and that I'll give a shot with, is one of the rear windows defroster repair kits.
I've used that before to repair a broken trace on a car I had before and it works well.
It's like paint on, like painting finger nails and dries in 24 hours.
Thanks for confirming.
If it's just the pads making bad contact, try graphite. We repaired my grandmother's TV remote with a pencil one time.
Oh, I forgot.... as for this silver stuff to stick better, have you tried to remove the sheen from the PCB to see if the "ink" with adhere better?
When I saw this I thought, I've love to have one. But in that the ink doesn't stick well, is a total deal breaker.
I'm going to get some bare boards to try it out. It works well enough for components, but for anything that needs to be physically robust it's not going to last. I guess we could try adding hot glue or epoxy to the sockets to make them stronger.
@@atomic14 Another option that should be easy, would be to use sockets that have mounting holes where you can drill through the PCB and put small screws to hold it.
Another option, would be those sockets with little legs that go through the board to be soldered.
With those, you could drill the pass-through holes after the trace is laid and where possible, add a bit of the ink, by hand, to the underside.
Then you can mount the socket, legs through the PCB and solder both sides.
That "should" hold much better.
nice
Very nice :D
But is it ink or is it paint?
In theory, I could make a 3d printer attachment to do this :)
I bet it's something in between of colloidal silver and soldering paste.
It rather make sense to make a solder paste dispenser. Printing PCBs is very questionable solution while CNC solder paste dispenser is definitely useful and even should be easier to make
I'm not yet convinced that this is better than milling
Or just spending $5 and waiting a week or so... I think I'm going to find it useful for quick prototypes - but time will tell.
That's a lot of limitations for the price, but it's also pretty cool that it does the solder paste all in one.
Had a thought on a really strong way to mount modules like that USB board. Instead of soldering on a pin header first, I would take the headers out of the module, and try soldering the bottom of those vias onto pads on the board, BGA style. Then for strength you could screw the module directly onto the board using the holes in the module and some corresponding holes on your PCB. I think that would hold up to quite a lot of abuse.
Been doing it for 7 months now, savings me a fortune remaking cracked boards. Just need better access to PCB routes online
Nice - are you using a Voltera?
@@atomic14 yes I managed to find a local hobby group that got demo units. I bought my own and since I've been using it a month prior I managed to get lots of assistance using the software and what works best with circuit boards it'll only improve. I did get a nice warming plate for about a grand it really gives me a lot more help with stronger connections
You could get the ink and use it in a vintage plotter 😀
Haha - could be useful for signing Christmas cards!
I wish there was a conductive filament as well as insulation one so you could print PCBs on an ordinary, dual material, 3d printer, lol.
I wonder if electroplating a layer of copper would improve wetting
probably. might also work to reinforce the bond between the traces/pads and the board, or at least make them more rigid so they don't flex as easily.
Can't see the niche for this, especially with the price tag. Seems you can get better and faster results with toner transfer at home
Cool in concept, nice to watch on youtube - but in practice its a non starter - too limited, too expensive.
Isolation milling can be had for 250eu with 3018, for 5k you can probably get a LPKF machine that will outdo this one by a mile and half.
I hadn't heard of LPKF machines before - I'll have to take look (though I don't have 5K laying around to spend :))
I wonder if you could make PCBs with a laser engraver... just put down a layer of copper foil and remove as necessary.
Also never heard of this company, this lasers looks awesome. Do you mean LPKF ProtoLaser H4 by 5k machine? I really doubt that german MOPA (likely) laser + mill in class 1 housing could cost 5k. My bet it costs 20-50k.
@@DFPercush this is exactly what LPKF offer, there is even multiple solutions with UV, green and IR lasers. I'm curious how they've managed to ablate copper without any damage to a substrate. Every attempt of making PCB with fiber engraver I've seen ended up with burned FR4.
Heck just the dispensing the solder paste on an existing board might make that worth it.
That's what I want to try next - just need to get the next PCB done :)
Why not go further?! This printer need to use another interchangable head with UV-resin, and install UV-lamps into case. It solves many problems - 1) It actually gives this printer a ultra purpose - to print multi-layers schemes. 2) It would allow to create more force-resistance solder joints - just by having them bigger and by covering joint perimeter with UV-resin.
👍
To be honest, I would like to try this additive printing process myself.
Agfa has some nice ink for laserjet printers (eg. soldermask ink or photoresist ink, which is applied and cured in one printing step.).
(And I think, the best printer for this could be the LP50 made by Suss.)
So I would'nt need to make films with a photoplotter, as this first developement process has lots of potential for failure and i haven't got the hang for it yet.
You could stick a UV laser pointer on your favorite 3-axis system that you have on hand and g-code hack it to make a cheap and albeit slightly crappy version of an LDI system
@@skyeozga4935 Yes, I could do this, but then I'll lose the capabillity for twolayer-pcbs and the quality of the developed film will drop pretty hefty.
(At the Moment of the application of the photoresist, the pcb is allready drilled and metalplated.)
U need higher temp or more time in top temp during reflow dude
nice idea, but I think its mostly for one off prototyping.
Dang why couldn’t they add the pnp to it also? Then it’s fully done.
Is it normal to half un-melted solder left over round the joints as I can still see the tiny balls of solder ? I think this is so niche they can't be making many. The complexity of the circuit is very limited double sided and via rivets all seems oddly like a step back and Oh ! the price tag to rich for me I fold !....cheers.
I think that's the effect of the solder no flowing on the pads, it kind of melts in place and you get the flux residue remaining. Or I need to crank up the heat a bit more. It just doesn't behave like normal reflow. And you're right, the price is way too much (as demonstrated by almost all the comments :))
:)@@atomic14
If this can be used a CNC milling machine, whats the point of the silver paint? You can probably make better PCBs using the milling function.
The main issue with the machine would be how strong the milling head is attached to the machine. Currently everything is attached by strong magnets so you can't apply too much lateral force to the head.
maybe if you sand the pcb beforehand, the ink will stick better to it
Interesting tech. The problem is just a little more complexity and you’ll need a via. What’s the solution then? I don’t see this as being any more useful then toner transfer and good old FC. I’m not even sure it can make finer traces.
Definitely, and once you start drilling holes, aligning top and bottom prints, and then banging in tiny rivets... it feels good for quick simple prototypes where breadboard is too messy, but is it in a sweet spot where it's really useful.
Loctite the surface mounts in place after soldering
Good idea!
It seems more like a glorified breadboarding solution, rather than a PCB prototyping solution. I mean, with its limitations you can’t really use it for prototyping your final PCB layout design. So, once you’ve “prototyped” your “breadboarded” circuit design, you still have to go down the final PCB design prototyping path (with the usual delays waiting for your chosen PCB manufacturer to deliver).
I don't see any advantage over using a laser printer, transparency film, photoresist, and a vat of ferric chloride. Neat gizmo but I'd give up and go back to how I did it in high school pretty quickly.
Varmış👍