Photo-etching Printed Circuit Board (homebrew PCB)

Very good tutorial. However, photo sensitive boards are quite expensive and you get only one shot to get it right else the board is wasted, and you need a UV bed.

I've been using the toner transfer method from glossy photo paper with very good results. If it doesn't look good the first time I can just wipe it off with acetone and try again. The only disadvantage is I can't use HCl/H2O2 solution to etch. It lifts the toner negative from the copper prematurely. FeCl does not.

this is an excellent very informative video, but i started cracking up @ 20:35 when you said...i take no responsibilty if you kill yourself...

The program is called EAGLE and you can find it by googling up "EAGLE cad". I tried to post the link in a reply to your comment, but the comment was not posted!

Thank you for your clarification!

very good job. can plz you write down the program names you used in this process.

thanks

Copper oxide is either black (CuO) or red (Cu2O). The green stuff is copper cloride which results from a reaction between copper and the hydrochloric acid.

CuO(s) + 2 HCl(aq) → CuCl2(aq) + H2O(l)

Thank you for the video .. very good.

It is an RS232 transceiver based on the Maxim MAX232 integrated circuit.

I made a dedicated one so I could re-use it on different projects without having to prepare a different one every time: I simply connect Tx and Rx as they come out from my AVR (ie. at TTL voltages) and power it. It just works. :)

I suddenly wana make my own circuit boards! just as a matter of interest, for what device/use did you make that one for?! great video! Thanks!

[continued] for the paper to "slip" on the board, so thin traces are quite hard to get. In any case, it's very likely that I'm just too goofy to get it to work properly. ;)

I never used ferric chloride, but I'm not sure it would be faster. From what I read, it is faster only if it's heated up, while my solution of HCl and H2O2 works fairly quickly (especially if you have ground planes, which you should have anyway) at ambient temperature. It is not really stockable, though!

Hello, thanks for your thanks. :)
I don't recall whether I mentioned this in the video or not, but I have attempted the toner transfer method and I found it to be much harder to reproduce than UV exposure and development. Once you figure out the correct timing for the exposure and the development, you can pretty much do them on the first attempt, while ironing requires using proper paper (some say magazines, others say photo paper, etc.) with the proper pressure. It is also very easy [continues]