Success in fabricating a home rolled PCB

[CharlieWorton]

Hey, Lango1818!  I don't know where on the planet you are, but the Brother HL-L2320D is the cheapest printer Brother sells in Canada, typically $95 CAD at Costco and Amazon.  It's the printer i use and recommend; by setting the toner density to 6 (covered in an earlier post in this thread) I'm able to get incredibly dense blacks.  Prior to using the Brother i was using an HP 1020, and i can verify that the Brother is superior.  It's also a great printer in its own right.  Hope that helps!  >Charlie

[czorgormez]

a small tip from my experiences, to much roller pressure/heat or too much pass from laminator : yes it sticks better but can widen your tracks. i mean 10 mil tracks become a 12-13 or more mils.

[szlovak]

A lot of printers let you tweak toner density - usually its a setting buried in the printer driver. Sometimes you have to mess with the front panel controls. Default density often isn't good enough for TT.

Not necessarily, I found out that on chalk paper default amount is OK for most cases. I have even lowered it one notch, letters on regular paper are a tiny bit faded. Chalky paper doesn't soak in toner so much. I use Lexmark T430

[Psi]

a small tip from my experiences, to much roller pressure/heat or too much pass from laminator : yes it sticks better but can widen your tracks. i mean 10 mil tracks become a 12-13 or more mils.

Yes, I found I needed to enlarge the gaps to get things to work for fine pitch chips.
eg, 0.2mm track and 0.2mm gap had to be made as 0.25/0.15 so that it came out as 0.2/0.2 after press and etch.

[nigelwright7557]

Its 30+ years since I last did a home made pcb.

I can design a pcb and get it made and delivered in a week from China for peanuts.
While  I am waiting for it I can get on and write the software for the project.

What I get back is a professional pcb with solder resist and silk screen.

If I need a small quick and dirty pcb I use stripboard which is very rare.

These days with LTSPICE I can test a design so risk of bad pcb is minimal.