Re: gEDA-user: free technology printer

[Mike Jarabek <mjarabek@istop.com>]

Hi,

   Tek used to have a wax based technology called a `Phasar'.  The wax 
itself seemed to resist my Ferric Cloride etchant, but I had great 
dificulty in transferring the wax to the PCB.  I tried transferring it 
from paper and transparencies, but could not control the temperature, 
the wax went from solid to runny liquid very quickly, and tended to 
smear the traces.  At the time, I had though that if I could somehow 
feed the actual bare board through the printer I could image directly 
onto the copper, and skip the whole transfer step. ( Unfortunatly the 
printer belonged to my employer, and the paper path through the printer 
had too many bends in it... And my raw PCB material was not that 
flexible. :-)

Mike

Lars Segerlund wrote:

> Now I wonder how hard it would be to modify a common printing head to spray a low temperature thermoplastic, does anybody know ?
>
> It seem's this would be a nice project :-) ...
>
> A heating setup, ( resistance wire or similar ), gravity feed and a modified inkjet head ( probably an older is better ) and then a feed mechanism like an old x-y plotter ( pen ), ie. the card can be feed directly from the axis of a stepper motor or similar.
>
> Come to think of it, to scavange the mechanics from an old printer would probably be the best option !
>
>
>  
> <SNIP>
>  
--
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                             Mike Jarabek
                               FPGA/ASIC Designer
http://www.istop.com/~mjarabek
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