R
Rich Grise
- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
[email protected] wrote: ....
The best way is to stop screwing around with nasty ass chemicals which
are incredibly toxic and will give you crappy results. You think any
company would seriously do this stuff? Even for prototyping? For
prototyping if it has to be done in house its usually done with a
milling machine. Otherwise, you could just design PCBs on some CAD
software (Eagle for instance) and then send them out to a board house.
They don't charge that much. Why would you want to expose yourself to
those chemicals if you don't have to? What do you plan to do with them
once you've used them? Please don't tell me you are going to dump them
down the drain.
Good Grief! The only thing wrong with 2.95/quart FeCl3 is that you have
to use good etching techniques and practices. You make the stuff sound
like cyanide (which, BTW, is used routinely in industry). It's really
quite innocuous. When it doesn't etch copper good enough any more,
you can either recharge it with some acid, which probably _is_ fairly
hazardous to handle, or dump a bunch of "washing soda", sodium carbonate,
into it, and _then_ it's safe to pour down the drain, although I also
hear it makes some kind of muddy sludge, which might or might not flush
well.
If _that_ makes you paranoid, then decant the supernatant liquid through
a filter of some kind - a coffee filter would probably be fine, and just
toss the sludge into the trash. It's basically rock powder, which either
Spehro Pefhany or John Popelish has pointed out. Or maybe both. ;-)
But, depending on your budget, and how much screwing around you want to
do - it once took me all day to make one 6" x 9" board, not counting
having the artwork shot. It might be simpler to send out some kind of
artwork - I hear that there are electronic CAD programs that will output
Gerber files, and there are board houses that can make you a board for,
like $50.00. I'm confident someone will clarify that, if I'm misinformed
about pricing.
Good Luck!
Rich