Re: Printed Circuit Board Supplies

I, too, graduated to a dry film laminator. I used two of them, one for
resist and one for solder mask and legend. But that is a pretty heavy
investment for casual use. I have never tried to iron on the resist film,
but would probably try that before I would use the liquid film again. I
agree that the dry film sensitized boards are really tough. Solder mask
and legend film seem as tough as screened inks.

One nice thing about ferric cloride is that it dries to a pile of salty
rust when you let the spent stuff evaporate. The problem is that you can't
use it for plated through boards which use solder to prevent the etching of
the copper you want to keep. It eats solder as well as copper.

The thick film approach has a lot going for it, but again, it is probably
not a practical process for most of us.

Ted

>From: Jon Elson <jmelson@...>
>
>
>>The hot roll laminating of the dry film allows it to stick well to
>boards that are less than
>perfectly clean. I clean them as well as I can, but they still have a
>few spots or slight
>blemishes on them. The resist still sticks to the entire board, blemish
>or not.
>I don't ever want to use the KPR type process again, but I have no
>qualms about
>using dry film. The Fe2Cl3 etchant is pretty hard on skin, but I use
>rubbermaid