what do you think about "pcb laser exposer" ?

[legacy]

breakouts are good for chips, in my case i use to integrate OA and a bit of analog part into an home made PCB which is the most problematic stuff if done on 1000-holes boards; PCB toner transfer is exactly good for that, small circuit adapter/breakout, or things related to "carriers" boards, typically related to power and ground, plus their connectors.

[Alex Eisenhut]

breakouts are good for chips, in my case i use to integrate OA and a bit of analog part into an home made PCB which is the most problematic stuff if done on 1000-holes boards; PCB toner transfer is exactly good for that, small circuit adapter/breakout, or things related to "carriers" boards, typically related to power and ground, plus their connectors.

My projects aren't that ambitious. I use surfboards to create the "local systems", then I solder the whole mess down to a 3x4" single-side copper clad which are still quite cheap, then all the little messes talk to each other.

[jeremy]

I spent quite some time these days in reading, thinking of building a laser PCB engraver but after your post I started to actually think!    Gracias 

Don't let me stop you! It's not going to be competitive with lithography, but if it's for fun then I say why not  even if you don't finish, you will learn a lot. Nothing wrong with thinking or reading.

Just some notes:
- you can't use a co2 laser to get rid of copper (10um wavelength). You need to vapourise it at a wavelength that absorbs a lot more energy. More like 1um or below
- you need an insane amount of power to vapourise metal. A laser outputting this much power continuously would melt itself straight away. So you need to use a pulsing/duty cycle trick like "q switching" or "mode locking". The other problem is that if your pulse takes too long to deliver all of the power, the metal will redistribute the heat like a heat sink (particularly a problem with copper!). When I say too long, I'm talking something like more than 100ps.
- you also need to generate a pulse which will not remove the fibreglass.
- you will almost certainly need to use a diode pumped solid state laser (DPSS)

Here is a commercial product:
- $150k each iirc

Or Google "laser ablation pcb" for lots more interesting information.

[legacy]

thanks for the key-search (laser ablation pcb), it's exactly the WOW technology i was looking for

[westfw]

Maskless imaging is the future.

So... Can I make a registration frame for my "XXX with Retina Display",  shove in a pre-sensitized PCB, run some display software to make sure the scaling is right and I only use blue pixels, and expose a PCB that way?   I'm not clear on the issues of pixel continuity on high-res color displays or screen intensity and wavelengths vs photoresist sensitivity, but not nominal "pixel density" of 300+ppi should be plenty for a lot of the same designs where people expect to be able to use mechanical etching or direct toner transfer techniques...  Obviously I could put up with "10 minute" scale exposures rather than "mere seconds."