Make plastic printed circuits with a standard laser cutter [video] | Hacker News Reader

Make plastic printed circuits with a standard laser cutter [video]

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81 pointsnadavami26 comments

What's even more interesting is that this is pretty accessible. Given fairly common equipment, at least in a hackerspace, you can make ~8 mil traces on plastic or FR4. Not only that, but you can make them in 3D and with plated vias.

This dude has some absolutely jaw dropping (sputtering, scanning electron microscope, waterjet etc) videos on his channel; it's definitely worth checking out the rest of his back catalogue.

Google tells me 'mil' is some kind of abbreviation for 'thou' or thousands of an inch which means 8 mil = 0.2mm

It's an abbreviation for "mille", same root as the "milli" in millimeter. Common in electronics for describing trace widths and pitches, even outside of the US simply because there are lots of parts laid out in whole numbers of mils.

8 mil traces on a DIY circuit board is pretty good, it's good enough to be able to do some quite fine surface mount parts.

Also common for measuring thickness for films and foils:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousandth_of_an_inch#Contexts...

I'm jealous of people who have such an elaborate workspace with so many toys and access to reagents. Still, it's super interesting to see all the engineering challenges that go into taking something from "works" into "work reliably"

I agree, the tools available now for tinkering are mind boggling! Of course, the other component is the time to spend on learning to use the tools, and for designing stuff to make with them...

With regards to chemistry - a staggering array of chemical supplies can be purchased from the hardware store, druggist, or supermarket; the trick is knowing what common name to look for, to get a particular chemical. Searching online for permutations of what you're looking for, and "household", "MSDS", or "common name" can yield some good results.

> [16:45] And when I was getting up to about, you know... test number 66 or whatever here, it all started to fall into place...

Quotes that let you know you're doing real home science.

One of the advantages of the way FR4 PCBs for example are made is the following: 1) you can deposit a thin layer using an electroless process 2) then now that you have a continuous conducting surface you can electoplate to make a thick layer of copper that is quite strong and durable

Anyway, it would seem like with all this work he could have used the laser to define a photomask on copper clad board with some photosensitive material there, then just watch in the iron chloride solution as people have been doing for ages?

2 layer PCBs are really cheap these days and you don’t end up with vats of chemicals left over..

Anyway cool stuff, I’ve tried to do similar stuff and has always just found that paying $50 for a few PCBs is actually much more economical than this type of setup.

The whole reason for experimenting with this was to be able to create traces on 3d printed parts - the test runs were just on rectangular coupons for ease of testing and because he printed what looks like hundreds of them.

> 2 layer PCBs are really cheap these days and you don’t end up with vats of chemicals left over..

The problem I have is that I have to wait weeks and get a hundred PCBs when I only want one.

Well, no. Services like JLPCB or AllPCB have a 1.5 day manufacturing time and both feature express shipping via DHL (APCB for free even). There are tons of services like these. Even 4 layer lead-free boards don't break the bank. MOQ is 1-5 on all of these services.

Even here in Germany, where local PCB manufacturing is usually very expensive compared to the options above, services like PCBJoker exist, which are only about 20 to 30 % more expensive.

DHL shopping is always more than 20 euros for me. I wouldn't call 35 euros for a PCB cheap.

To which country? AllPCB doesn't charge anything for DHL to the US and Germany e.g. MOQ is 5pcs.

Greece, I'll check that out, thank you.

Looks like it's $20 including shipping, which is more than fair, thanks for the tip.

I had a good experience with AllPCB recently. They even reached out for clarification on an extraneous drl file I had included in the gerbers zip accidentally.

Yea check out pcbzone.net I’ve used a number of times for super fast boards. They are in New Zealand but you get stuff in like 3-5 days for even 4-6 layer boards for a very reasonable price. There are many companies like that now. If you are willing to spend around $50-100 for say 5 boards or less there are quite a few options for a few days of waiting.

Unfortunately, I'm just a hobbyist and can't justify that much money. It seems to be cheap, fast, good, choose two.

In the case of PCB's in most cases it takes hours to make stuff, and you need to buy components for the boards and pay for shipping, etc.. so I guess I understand not wanting to pay for something because we all wish it was free, but making PCB's either costs you a bunch of your own time, or money if you buy the components to populate -- which then takes a bunch more time, etc.. so its confusing to me that you are a hobbyist that may be interested in making PCB's, but spending say $100 is is too much money? I mean even buying a laser cutter / etcher is not cheap nor is a reasonably good 3d printer.. I guess I'm just saying it seems like a lot of people never take the plunge making PCB's mostly because they are worried they will make a mistake and "waste" the money, but that's a different point than it being "too expensive".. anyway, I'd say just give it a shot on one of the services that cost $50...

I'm not talking about assembly services, I'm only talking about PCB fabrication. When ten boards cost $10, paying $100 for one is too expensive, yes. I can just pay the extra $20 and get the faster shipping option.

https://www.pcbzone.net/User/QuoteArea.aspx?type=cal check that out.. you can get say 5 PCB's that are 25mm x 25mm 4 layers for ~50 euros. yea maybe one day it'll be free shipping at $10 for one board. But until then its more like minimum of $50 plus shipping for a small number of boards.

I tend to use dirtypcbs, which I don't think is the cheapest around anymore - maybe try https://www.seeedstudio.com/fusion_pcb.html too.

A batch of 12 (2-layer, 1oz, 6,6mil, roughly 5x10cm) boards I got made a couple weeks ago, which were a rush order DHL shipped to New Zealand, totalled roughly $60USD. Without rush processing and quick shipping, I think the same thing would've been a little over $20.

Seeed looks good, they offer a $1 for 3 deal, which with DHL 1-3 day shipping comes out to $34. Pretty decent, thanks.

I've heard good things about oshpark[1] for hobbyists, but I personally have never used them.

[1] https://oshpark.com/

I use OSH regularly for prototyping. Their boards are really good quality and I've been happy with them. Sometimes the production times aren't as fast as I'd like, but ordering quantities of 3 usually is very economical.

In addition to the services already mentioned in this thread, this might help: PCBShopper is a price comparison site that will take your board dimensions and other parameters and list the cheapest sources: https://pcbshopper.com/

Ingenious method!

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