
Etch a circuit board with kitchen supplies - drmacak
https://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-Circuit-Board-With-Household-Goods/
======
Stratoscope
When I was in third grade, back around 1959, they pulled me out of class and
asked me if I would like to go to Mrs. Spencer's Workshop for part of each
day. This was a special class for bored and restless kids where we could work
on projects of our own.

I started out drawing maps of freeway interchanges. A new freeway had just
come through town (this was a very new thing at the time) and I was fascinated
by the interchanges. I made sketches of all the ones between Eugene and
Portland, and then I looked for something new to do.

I had been playing with electrical circuits for a while, so naturally I wanted
to make a printed circuit board for a science fair project.

I didn't have one of those fancy phenolic sheets with copper on one side, but
I figured I could just use a sheet of copper and put electrical tape on both
sides to act as resist for the traces, and then mount the whole thing on a
wooden board when done.

It would be a circuit, on a board, etched like a real printed circuit. So I
thought that counted as a printed circuit board.

I asked Mrs. Spencer if she could get me a copper sheet and some electrical
tape, along with a tank of nitric acid. And she did!

I taped up the sheet, dunked it in the nitric acid, and watched the
unprotected parts dissolve away. And then I pulled the remaining circuit out
of the acid, rinsed it off, peeled off the tape, and mounted it on my board.

Of course we didn't need eye protection or anything fancy like that back in
those days.

And the circuit worked the first time! It may have been the first and last
circuit or program where I had such good luck.

It was the most awesomest day at school ever!

~~~
skookumchuck
I once did a science project in the school lab that dealt with sulfuric acid
in an ehrlenmeyer flask. I completed the experiment, and went home. Only then
I noticed that the whole front of my shirt had huge holes in it.

I was a lot more careful with acid after that.

------
pmorici
This kind of stuff is cool from a educational perspective but with services
like OSHPark I've lost motivation to make diy circuit boards. The batch
services are just so cheap and fast now days.

~~~
mrfusion
Wow these services are getting cheap. That’s really awesome. Thanks for
sharing that.

~~~
markrages
Even cheaper (both senses of the word) are Chinese shops like jlcpcb and
allpcb.

~~~
ddeck
Strange Parts[1] made a great factory tour video of the JLC facility in China
for anyone that interested in such things:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljOoGyCso8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljOoGyCso8s)

[1] [https://strangeparts.com/](https://strangeparts.com/)

~~~
hoaw
Scotty is doing a good job of catching everyone up on what is going on in
China. Chinese manufacturers have been putting out 10x10x10 boards for 50 RMB
($7 USD) for many years now. Rush order (24 hours)? Another 50 RMB. Yellow
solder mask? Also another 50 RMB. Once you start talking about 4 layer, flex,
rgba solder mask or other customization the difference is even greater.

------
proee
When I around 12 years old I attempted to etch my first circuit board. I took
my copper clad board, placed it in a pie tin and then proceeded to pour in the
etching acid. Within seconds, the acid reacted violently with tin and
dissolved through the bottom of the pan and spilled all over the table saw and
garage floor where I was working. Let's just say my dad was not a happy camper
when I showed him my handiwork!

~~~
Mister_X
What acid did you use, when I etched my first board in 1969, I used Ferric
chloride (that stuff stains everything!) and an aluminum pie plate, it worked
fine, no reactions at all, other than slowly etching my copper circuit board.

~~~
proee
I believe it was ferric chloride. The table saw and garage foor were
permanently stained a brown rust color.

------
bacon_waffle
If you're new to making circuit boards, I highly recommend giving KiCad a try,
for drawing your schematic and board layout. It's open source, and while there
are some rough edges, it seems to be built on a good foundation and there's
been lots of good work being done on it lately. The learning curve isn't too
steep, as these things go, but you're not likely to be limited it anytime
soon, if ever.

[http://kicad-pcb.org/](http://kicad-pcb.org/)

~~~
dbcurtis
I use KiCAD when I am forced to. Of the two open source EDA packages that I am
aware of, KiCAD certainly has an easier learning curve than gEDA. That said, I
started with gEDA so I have surmounted the learning and libraries problems
sufficiently for my needs. My beef with KiCAD is that it is weak sauce, I find
it missing a number of the features that I take for granted with gEDA. I don’t
use KiCAD for personal projects, the limitations frustrate me. OTOH Somebody
just starting out and doing simple boards would probably find KiCAD more
approachable than gEDA.

~~~
ohazi
I too dragged myself up the seemingly insurmountable learning curve that was
gEDA about a decade ago and used it exclusively for many years. I poked around
in KiCad every now and then and didn't think much of it either.

Since the changes that CERN made, KiCad is a completely new tool. It is now my
tool of choice, and unless gEDA gets a similarly drastic revamp, I'm probably
never going back.

------
Animats
The iron-on toner transfer thing has been around since laser printers came
out. It doesn't work very well. Note the mention of needing a few tries to get
it right. "Touch up" with a conductive ink pen and X-acto knife is often
required. The resolution of this process is not that good. There also tend to
be registration problems, because laser printer roller feeds are not precision
devices. If you're doing modern surface mount components, it may not be good
enough. There also tend to be registration problems, because laser printer
roller feeds are not precision devices. You don't get plated through holes. So
through-board connections have to be made by soldering in little wires. There
are special rivets and tools available for this.

Other than as a curiosity, or for very, very simple boards for large
components, this is more trouble than it's worth. Quick-turn one-off boards
are so cheap now.

------
jimnotgym
If you want to make your first PCB for the simplest of projects this is
overkill.

Instead:

\+ Get a single sided copper board and draw your design with a marker pen

\+ Etch it in ferric chloride in a plastic takeaway tub

\+ Drill holes

If it is too hard to draw with marker pen, then it is time to get the boards
made for you from one of the links in this thread. The method in this article
just looks frustrating.

~~~
swebs
Or you can just buy a roll of copper tape and not have to deal with acids at
all.

------
syntaxing
The stuff you use for etching your own boards tend to be pretty nasty. Enough
to burn holes in clothes and give you a rash if you're careless. Like other
said, it's more economical to order boards through services like OSHPark and
Seeed. If you want to make your own board for educational purposes or super
quick turnaround (<24 hours) I think you're better off milling it. More of a
hassle but much safer. Get a cheap CNC like a 3020 or something.

------
Severian
The PCB tutorials by Chuck Adams(K7QO) on YT are pretty good and go over a
unique PCB style that he calls MUPPET. Zero thru-hole mounting, but uses thru-
hole parts (and SMD sometimes). His tutorials also go over creating the print
transfer using a small lamination machine rather than a hot clothes iron. I
recommend checking out the series.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6AmT1trO60](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6AmT1trO60)

------
SlowRobotAhead
I totally understand the hobbiest aspect here, but... I just paid $15 for 3x
4-layer boards that will be delivered to me in a week. IDK, cool, but I’d
spend more than $15 making 2-layer with way worse tolerances.

~~~
romed
People don’t really appreciate what a miracle the quick-turn electronics
industry is. You can upload a Gerber file and get boards back in 24 hours. 2
layers, 4 layers, 6 layers whatever. Tiny little holes all over the board.
Boards two feet square. If I order a huge box of stuff from Digi-key right now
I’ll have it on my desk at 8am tomorrow. Or I can drop-ship it to the PCB
place and get stuffed boards, inspected and reworked, in a couple days. It’s
incredible, and all this has been up and running for at least 20 years.

~~~
bacon_waffle
I 100% agree that these services are incredible, but I think you're
downplaying the changes in the last few years a bit much, considering the
tooling improvements and plummeting prices.

As an example: last week at work, we had a situation where some product
designer types and some engineers were having a hard time thrashing out
aspects of a particular thing we've been talking about. It literally took me
one working day and ~$300USD, to go from an email thread, to an order of
custom PCBs and parts to make 10 physical widgets, which will be in our hands
this week. In the meantime, I can nut out the firmware on a dev board from the
pile of such things in my desk drawer, with free tools, easy-to-get docs, etc.
That dev board costs about the same as two or three pints at the local pub.

I think in 1998, an engineer at my level would've spent an equal or greater
amount of time on making a document and illustrations to explain the concept
and tradeoffs that go in to it, then meetings to talk over that document, and
possibly still no concrete conclusion. Instead, we get a small pile of working
prototypes to fuss with and iterate on - if we go in this direction then we're
already a substantial step toward the real product. And, our main office is in
California, the factory is in China, and I'm in a small city in New Zealand.

Sure, this was something that could be done back then, but only if you were in
the right place, and had the relevant parts pretty well figured out, and it
would've cost a fair bit more money.

~~~
setquk
Spot on all points there.

Back in 98 the company I was working for was paying three salaries for EDA
software licenses and $2-3k for a 48 hour turnaround on a couple of eurocards.

------
analog31
I still have one of the first circuit boards I made, sometime around 1982. I
plugged my soldering iron into a Variac to run it at a lower temperature, then
used it to draw with beeswax onto a piece of bare board, correcting my
mistakes with a knife.

Today I just use a quick turn service, or some form of "dead bug"
breadboarding.

~~~
Mister_X
Cool! So do I, from 1969, in my high school electronics class and it still
works too.

It's for a variable audio oscillator that rises and is re-set by a micro
switch.

I tuned it with a precision trim pot, to sound "like" a then new, electronic
Police Siren, it was a big hit at school with all the guys.

Unfortunately, I used the case from my first Transistor Radio, which was an
xmas present in 1962, a beautiful red and creme, Jupiter, 6 transistor radio,
I regret cannibalizing it for the case, to this day.

Cream and white one here:
[https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/jupiter_6_transistor.html](https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/jupiter_6_transistor.html)

------
evan_
Sticker backer paper is a good idea- I have also had good luck using shiny
wrapping paper.

------
amelius
Ok, now let's automate this!

