In this first video, I design a simple circuit and PCB in Eagle CAD. I then prepare the eagle file to be printed on transparency paper.
Here I print out several copies of the transparencies and align them using a backlit surface.
Finally, I demonstrate my Ultraviolet Exposure Unit and use it to expose the PCB for which we made the mask.
In this video, I etch the awesomely developed board that we made in the previous video.
Last of all, I drill the holes in the printed circuit board. This video concludes this series on how to make printed circuit boards.
Before I decided to make printed circuit board through the photoresist method, I spent a lot of effort and time making CNC machines to try and mill PCB's. Being able to mill boards sounded appealing. All of that appeal disappeared after I tried making two CNC mills. Both of them worked, though not well enough to make printed circuit boards. One of them was a completely homemade CNC that I built out of three stepper motors, some threaded rod, and aluminum from Home Depot. The second mill that I made was a Probotix Fireball V90 that I just assembled. This worked better than the one I built from scratch, however, between the give in the Z axis, the backlash, and the not perfectly level table, it was really hard to get a working PCB out of these machines.
The Ultraviolet Exposure Unit was far better than any machine I have ever used to make PCB's. If I learned any one take-away more important than any other while working on this project, it is that two dimensional / two-axis manufacturing processes are far more reliable than three-axis processes. While I do use them on occasion, I really don't like CNC mills. I guess there is a time and place for everything though.
If you want to check out an awesome two layer board that I made using this exposure unit, check out the ALU on my 8-Bit Computer project.
Bunch of Electricals | Matthew Ian Burns
burns.matthewian@gmail.com