PCB Fabrication

Do you want to etch circuits onto existing clad PCB material?

Or do you want to "manufacture printed circuit boards"?

thanks for response, i would like to manufacture pc boards for my own consumption, not a techie so looking for a economical option as the machines are too expensive and i need to have a small production capacity.....

This is what I do when I need low qty for experimental purpose,

Take a cu Clad-clean surface- Make a +VE film or butter print of layout-make a screen from it- do the screen printing on clad with good chemical resistant ink- Drying- pass in ferric chloride solution(set time)- remove and wash- drilling-tining- masking and printing -use

One can also do photo-printing instead of screen print.

Avoid direct exposure of chemicals and inks to body.

your response is highly appreciated and thanks for it....

can you please be specific about the name and brand of the chemical resistant ink

regards

You can try it.

http://www.microinks.com/

i do highly appreciate and thank you for your response, thanks a lot for this valuable information.

Right on! This is good for many boards. Patience! Chemical control becomes an issue, too, as volume goes up.

I worked for a major PWB fab equipment company for 5 years.

The isn't much low volume equipment out there. The materials of construction are pricey.

And the leap from batch processing to continuous processing is major.

ya you are very right....indeed

We've been through this before... Turns out there's a bunch of companies out there that specialize in turning out small amounts of boards (even multi-layer) for a very reasonable price. Turn around time is very fast, as well.

From time to time I have produced small run PC boards at home with nearly the same sort of setup as Paulusgnome. For the UV exposure I just use a mercury sun lamp. That's overkill but it's what I have. To produce the boards in the past I've used a spray on etch resist from KONTAKT CHEMIE GMBH called "Positive 20 Plus" It works well and uses nothing more than a weak solution of lye as a developer. However, for some reason this stuff can no longer be imported to the U.S. from Germany. Plan "B" For me has been to use EAGLE CAD to produce printable artwork. laser print it onto ink jet type photo paper, heat transfer that to the board with an iron, remove the paper with water and etch the boards. EAGLE also produces the the art for the top side of the board parts layout. I know this takes a bit more effort than photo etching but for a few boards now and then, it does work. The last time I checked, the photo etch spray was available from Conrad electronics or Strixner-Holzinger, both in Germany and EAGLE CAD can be downloaded for free from several sources.

Try these guys - King Brothers - http://www.kbpcb.com/en/aboutus/info.htm

We use this manufacturer and we always do runs of 50-200 units of various boards. They are fairly good priced for the excellent quality they produce. Ask them for a quote.

I have been working in EMS for almost 2years as PCB supplier at Sanmina Australia

I have dealt with couple of tainwanese companies who are ready to provide professional PCB manufacturing at reasonable cost

Speedy Circuits - Taiwan

It depends on technology and the level of sophestication you want to have on your PCB (# of layer, RoHs complainace-material, plating, size, drill whole, special routing requiremnet,...etc.)

For typical two layer PCB, tin plated the cost will be:

USD250-400 tooling + $0.05/Cubic Cm (10000 cubic Cm) job

If the boards are identical, up to 100 at each time, there are plenty of companies around that will make them cheaper and better than you can, for a lower price too.....

Google PCB fabrication...

I came across a method there in which the traces are printed on a LASER printer (NOT INK JET!! That doesn't work) with photo paper. The print is then ironed (using a clothes iron) to the copper clad board. Wash the paper off (the ink stays), and then etch the board. This is just a brief overview of the method. Google to get further details. Also, this is very basic PCB fab. You might be able to do double sided if you are VERY careful with your registration (top side versus bottom side), but there are no plated through holes. You need to use through board jumpers to get from top to bottom side (and solder both top and bottom). You get bare copper traces... no tin plating here. Getting into these niceties begins to cost many $$, and are better left to the professionals.

I will also recommend EAGLE... www.cadsoftusa.com for board layout design software. Their FREE version works great for small projects