If you’re an impatient electronics fanatic, Rapid PCB Fabrication is a technique that allows you to make hardware development as easy as software development. Master it, you can do more with less, soothe your restless wild heart.
There are many methods of rapid plate making, such as the following:
● Mechanical engraving
This method uses physical engraving to separate the leads and pads on the PCB from the unwanted copper. Of course, if there is no such expensive professional equipment, you can also use a utility knife to describe it yourself, which is still ok for some very simple circuits.
In special cases, the copper layer of the PCB can also be engraved by a high-power laser, which is suitable for some special substrate circuit boards, such as the production of ceramic substrate PCB and aluminum substrate PCB.
● Chemical corrosion
The principle used in this category of methods is similar to the traditional PCB production process. They are all on the copper-clad surface of the PCB. Through exposure, thermal transfer, inkjet printing, oil pen hand-painting, etc., the pads that need to be reserved and The leads are covered, and the rest of the copper is removed by chemical etching to form a ready-to-use PCB.
Exposure method: A special pre-applied photosensitive adhesive PCB is required, and an ultraviolet lamp is used to complete the exposure. After that, two steps of developing and etching are needed to obtain the circuit board;
Thermal transfer method: It is only necessary to print the PCB circuit diagram on the thermal transfer paper through a laser printer, and then fix the toner on the copper clad layer of the PCB through a specific thermal transfer machine, and the required circuit can be obtained after corrosion. plate;
Inkjet printing: It is an inkjet printer [1] that needs special modification, and the circuit is printed directly on the PCB;
Oil pen drawing: The easiest, just use an ordinary oil-based marker and draw with ingenuity.
In addition, when drawing a circuit diagram, you can also use a stepper motor to drive an oil pen to complete the circuit drawing on the circuit board.
● Paste the circuit
For some circuits with relatively simple leads and relatively large currents, they can be pasted with copper foil tape.
● Conductive ink
This is adding some nano-silver particles to the ink, so that the ink can dry quickly and conduct electricity, forming a conductive metal film. On this basis, the desired circuit can be formed.
The advantage of the circuit formed in this way is that the required circuit can be formed on the surface of any object, but the width of the circuit is relatively large, and the resistance of the circuit is relatively large, which is suitable for the production of some simple control signal circuits.
● Castle in the sky
The highest state of realizing the circuit is the circuit without the circuit board. In fact, in the early circuit production, because the electronic components were relatively large, the circuit was directly welded between the component pins using leads. The current device ratio is relatively small. In special cases, removing the circuit board can greatly reduce the size of the circuit.
Why do you like heat transfer?
Favorite rapid plate making method, or the use of thermal transfer method. Not only is it very fast to make, basically a circuit board can be made in under a minute, but the materials required are very cheap.
Among them, the price of heat transfer machine is also very cheap, only a few hundred dollars. As for other consumables, they are all readily available. It is the quickness of this method that meets the needs of impatient sub-engineers.
● Little secrets in rapid plate making
In order to save time and obtain high-precision circuit boards, there is a little secret, which may be overlooked by most people who make PCBs, that is, PCBs with thin copper clad layers are used for circuit board production.
Weight loss in circuit boards – the effect of PCB in thermal transfer plate making after copper reduction is used to compare the effect of PCB with different copper thicknesses to make circuit boards. It can be seen that the thin PCB after copper reduction can achieve circuit production with a line width of 4 mil. This has reached the standard of ordinary PCB production process.
Of course, in order to achieve the effect of double-sided, flexible use of 0 Ω[resistor is a method of fusion of experience and inspiration.
