General > General Technical Chat
Come in through-hole components your time is up!
rob77:
--- Quote from: mtdoc on May 07, 2017, 06:11:04 pm ---Excellent Red Squirrel! :-+
The thing is, no matter how long it took, it was time spent using your hands versus staring at a screen and clicking a mouse.
--- End quote ---
so clicking a mouse is not "time spent using your hands" :-//
btw you can do your own boards ( i men manufacture them yourself) to have the "i made it with my hands" feeling. i'm making my own boards and using SMD parts and it's even better (in terms of good feeling from making it) than protoboarding because let's admit it.. nice green boards with smd parts are tending to be more aesthetic than protoboards.
i'm not saying doing it the old way is inferior.. not at all.. i even admire the patience of people capable of routing wires for hours (like Red Squirrel above :-+ ) , i'm just saying the smd boards are more aesthetic and you also have the "i made it with my hands satisfactory feeling" if you manufacture your boards at home like i do ;)
here are some examples of my boards:
Red Squirrel:
Wow those actually home made? What kind of process did you use for that? Did not really figure you could do SMD with toner transfer as most printers won't have enough DPI. I imagine you're using something more precise like some kind of milling machine?
mtdoc:
--- Quote from: rob77 on May 07, 2017, 07:34:18 pm ---
--- Quote from: mtdoc on May 07, 2017, 06:11:04 pm ---Excellent Red Squirrel! :-+
The thing is, no matter how long it took, it was time spent using your hands versus staring at a screen and clicking a mouse.
--- End quote ---
so clicking a mouse is not "time spent using your hands" :-//
btw you can do your own boards ( i men manufacture them yourself) to have the "i made it with my hands" feeling.
--- End quote ---
No, using a mouse is not using one's hands in the sense of building something by hand. There's a certain primal satisfaction that some people feel when building something by hand. For some people it can be taken to an extreme - for example wood workers who only use hand tools - no power tools.
The idea of making my own boards with the toner transfer, etc type methods using chemical etchant has no appeal to me but to each his or her own.
rob77:
--- Quote from: Red Squirrel on May 07, 2017, 07:42:39 pm ---Wow those actually home made? What kind of process did you use for that? Did not really figure you could do SMD with toner transfer as most printers won't have enough DPI. I imagine you're using something more precise like some kind of milling machine?
--- End quote ---
those are not toner transfer but imaging is done with a cheap 600/1200dpi laser printer.
the proces is:
1. print the designs to polyester transparencies (polyester has great dimensional stability so the image is not distorted)
2. clean the copper clad
3. laminate riston dry-film photoresist with a cheapest office laminator possible
4. use UV light (few cheap UV LEDs with a simple led driver circuit will do) to transfer artwork
5. develop in washing soda (don't buy expensive developer solution, it's just plain cheap washing soda anyway)
6. etch in ferric chloride or whatever other etchant you prefer
7. remove photoresist with sodium hydroxide (regular drain cleaner) + clean the board
8. laminate dynamask dry film solder mask to the board (again with the cheap laminator)
9. UV light to transfer solder mask artwork
10. develop in washing soda
11. cure the solder mask with UV
12. enjoy the product ;) and start populate the parts. i use the cheap "mechanic" solder paste - using a toothpick to make little dabs of paste on the pads, then place components and heat it with hot air to reflow.
the proces might seem to be expensive , but it's not... the polyester transparencies are $25 per 100 A4 sheets - so approx 25 cents per A4 sheet, the riston photoresist is approx 50cents per A4 sheet, dynamask is $3 per A4 sheet. chemicals are cheap $2 for a kilo of washing soda (you need approx 17grams per liter) and $3-4 for the drain cleaner (approx 20-30 grams per liter).
quality 3W 400nm UV leds are approx $4 - you can even trasfer with a single UV led (but i have overkill homemade rig with 15 of them - takes 5 seconds to expose the image)
tautech:
TH is in no way dead and in some little way we all need to help keep it alive......buy some and keep it in stock and alive.
How will we be able to repair old equipment without it. :scared:
Sure we mostly need to progress to SMD for new design, especially for commercial production.
Here's what GK is doing in this thread:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/oscilloscope-pong-for-1-or-2-players/
timb is doing the TH PCB that is nearly finished and he's intending to make it available to us. :-+
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version