Saturday, June 13, 2009

Direct Inkjet Print to PCB

I always had problems with the laser toner transfer method to PCB, my Samsung laser printer 'should' be able to do it as there are people out there that have been successful. The problem most have is that the Samsung toner requires a higher temperature to fuse to the board. But my problems were:

1. I had maxed out my laminator's temperature setting, my multimeter with temperature probe reads 184-190 Centigrade.
2. Using transparencies, most of the toner adheres to the board but there's always micro-holes/fractures throughout the toner.
3. Using the paper backing of labels, ALL the toner adheres to the board but still the micro-holes/fractures remain.
4. I tried using a clothes iron at a hotter temperature than the laminator to melt it more, but I tend to smudge the traces or if not, it doesnt have much of an effect. I was already deforming the transparency and pretty much started burning the label backing doing this.
5. When I make a mistake and try to remove the toner I use acetone, recently I can't find acetone anywhere anymore. Lacquer thinner could remove the toner but it requires a lot more elbow grease.

So I looked around the web and found out about direct-to-PCB inkjet printing on the CNCZone forums. A popular choice for modding was Epson branded printers as the Durabrite inks could withstand th etching process. I read all the posts on that particular thread and came across someone modding an Epson T20 (also here). Now this printer's sibling is available I my area and it was dirt cheap, so I bought one last week and after testing to make sure it works, I proceeded to tear it apart. I have just finished it a couple of days ago and a test print on paper came out well and good. I'll post some pics of my modded printer later on (for modding instructions see the link above) and PCB results.