Empty PCB
Cleaning Alcohol
Acetone
Pot Scrubber
Iron (Not the one your mom/wife is using
)
Press-N-Peel
Preparing the Press-N-Peel
After you have designed your pcb layout. Print it on a normal piece of paper:
Cut a piece of Press-N-Peel to the correct size of your layout leaving a bit of a border on all sides.
Cover your circuit with the press-n-peel on the paper and stick down the sides with some sticky tape.
Print you pcb layout again onto the press-n-peel by using the paper you just prepared
You can remove the press-n-peel. Be careful of not touching the printed side of the press-n-peel because the oil on your fingers will give you years of problems.
Now put the piece of printed on press-n-peel somewhere safe and start preparing the board.
Preparing the PCB
First cut the pcb's to the correct size
Then using the pot scrubber or some very fine sandpaper, clean the board until all scratches and finger marks are removed.
Now using the cleaning alcohol to clean the pcb. Try not to touch the cleaned surface as any oils on the pcb will give you problems with the image transfer.
Transferring the Image Layout
Place the press-n-peel onto the pcb and use the heated iron to iron on the pcb layout. I get best results after about 4 minutes of ironing.
After about 4 minutes drop the board into some water to cool down. Beware, the board and the surface you worked on is HOT.
Make sure it has cooled down before continuing with the next steps.
Slowly peel off the press-n-peel from the board. It's not a band-aid so don't just rip it off.
Now check your board for any problems. If some of the tracks didn't come out very well then use a permanent marker to touch it up
Remember if it's a total failure then just use the acetone to clean off the press-n-peel and you can start over
Now you can dump it into your etching solution and you have a etched board:
You can use the acetone to clean off the press-n-peel and any permanent marker and you should have a shiny board ready to be drilled and components soldered onto it.
Enjoy
