After building a couple of projects using printed circuit boards (PCBs) and few that simply used blank boards that required soldering my own wired connections, I wanted to take my project prowess to the next level. I wanted to make my own printed circuit boards. I stumbled on quite a few DIY guides for this. Here are a few of them:
Make Your Own Printed Circuit
How to Make Printed Circuit: An Illustrated Guide
I would say that the first link is more helpful. To summarize the process, you take a mirror image of the circuit that you want to appear on the board. Print this out on glossy paper (glossy magazine paper also works) using a laser printer. Take the print out and iron it onto a copper circuit board. The toner from the paper should transfer from the paper to the board. Remove the paper from the board by dunking the board in soapy water. Carefully remove the paper as it dissolves. Then, dunk the board in an etching solution. This should eat away everything that is not covered with ink. Thus, when you remove the board, and wipe away the ink, you should be left with a pretty printed circuit board.
To test this out, I went to my favorite site (Instructables) in search of a fairly simplistic project that I could both learn some new electronics/soldering skills and learn to make a PCB. I discovered The Stylophone.
A Stylophone is basically an electronic musical instrument that creates different sounds when you touch key pads with a metal stylus. The different "keys" are matched to various resistors that complete differing circuits. The different resistors and circuits produce the various sounds.
The first step was to make the PCB. I didn't have a liquid etching solution (which I later learned I could buy at Radio Shack). Instead, I bought some Ammonium Persulfate. When mixed with water, this was supposed to create a copper etchant.
After the board was finished, I purchased a Dremel so that we could cut the board down to size and drill out the holes for the components. Here I am doing some soldering. My CR-48 is in the background!
And a shot of the board about halfway through. Check out the size of those resistors! It is really hard to order parts off of electronics websites. There are so many, and they all have so many different options, that I must have accidentally stumbled upon these gigantic resistors that look like they were borrowed from old WWII airplane circuity or something. You can also see the big patches of solder that make the "keys".
Okay, here's the deal. It doesn't work. There were problems from the start. Although the etching process worked, mostly, there were plenty of places where the toner didn't transfer and the lines were not solid or complete. I spent a great deal of time with Jeremy examining and testing the various connections with a multimeter. But this was to no avail. We fixed a ton of them, but sadly, the darn thing never worked.
After taking a week off of the project, I decided that I was going to tear it apart, reuse some of the parts, and rebuild it using basic boards and wire when needed. I plan on building separate boards for each of the two chips and for the battery section. This should make future testing easier on this project. So stay tuned for pictures of the results.
Make Your Own Printed Circuit
How to Make Printed Circuit: An Illustrated Guide
I would say that the first link is more helpful. To summarize the process, you take a mirror image of the circuit that you want to appear on the board. Print this out on glossy paper (glossy magazine paper also works) using a laser printer. Take the print out and iron it onto a copper circuit board. The toner from the paper should transfer from the paper to the board. Remove the paper from the board by dunking the board in soapy water. Carefully remove the paper as it dissolves. Then, dunk the board in an etching solution. This should eat away everything that is not covered with ink. Thus, when you remove the board, and wipe away the ink, you should be left with a pretty printed circuit board.
To test this out, I went to my favorite site (Instructables) in search of a fairly simplistic project that I could both learn some new electronics/soldering skills and learn to make a PCB. I discovered The Stylophone.
A Stylophone is basically an electronic musical instrument that creates different sounds when you touch key pads with a metal stylus. The different "keys" are matched to various resistors that complete differing circuits. The different resistors and circuits produce the various sounds.
The first step was to make the PCB. I didn't have a liquid etching solution (which I later learned I could buy at Radio Shack). Instead, I bought some Ammonium Persulfate. When mixed with water, this was supposed to create a copper etchant.
I was joined with my brother and Julie on this project, and we went to Office Max to print out the file that would later be ironed onto the copper board.
Here is Julie's arm doing the ironing. (Check out my cool old train blanket!) You can also see how the photo paper is reacting to the ironing.
After Ironing, we dunked the board in the warm soapy water. This part took longer than I expected, but it was probably because of the "high" quality and thickness of the photo paper.
And the final products, pre-etching. The top board is for a christmas tree pov spinner I plan on making next.
Here are the board in their acid bath. Now, all of the instructions that I read said that this would take about 5 to 10 minutes. I had to leave these boards in acid for a good day! I don't know what I did wrong, but next time, I am going to try the liquid etching solution sold at Radio Shack.
After the board was finished, I purchased a Dremel so that we could cut the board down to size and drill out the holes for the components. Here I am doing some soldering. My CR-48 is in the background!
And a shot of the board about halfway through. Check out the size of those resistors! It is really hard to order parts off of electronics websites. There are so many, and they all have so many different options, that I must have accidentally stumbled upon these gigantic resistors that look like they were borrowed from old WWII airplane circuity or something. You can also see the big patches of solder that make the "keys".
And a picture of the "complete" Stylophone.
Okay, here's the deal. It doesn't work. There were problems from the start. Although the etching process worked, mostly, there were plenty of places where the toner didn't transfer and the lines were not solid or complete. I spent a great deal of time with Jeremy examining and testing the various connections with a multimeter. But this was to no avail. We fixed a ton of them, but sadly, the darn thing never worked.
After taking a week off of the project, I decided that I was going to tear it apart, reuse some of the parts, and rebuild it using basic boards and wire when needed. I plan on building separate boards for each of the two chips and for the battery section. This should make future testing easier on this project. So stay tuned for pictures of the results.
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