In the past I've tended to make transparencies from my PCB design package using a laser printer and a sheet of tracing paper. This doesn't work so well with the modern fast laser printers, since they use a very thin layer of toner.
I had been using a very old Canon Pixma IP4000 inkjet printer to make transparencies due to its ability to allow multiple passes of the same piece of paper with quite staggering accuracy. But alas, all good things come to an end, and one day the Canon decided to smoke its printhead. The loss of that printer was made worse by the fact it had unchipped ink cartridges that were very easy to refill, were translucent so you could see the actual ink level as you filled them and had an optical ink level detector that reliably informed you when the cartridge was actually running low. You could also physically unclip the print head and wash it for easy maintenance. Truly an engineers printer.
But now I've unwillingly ended up with two EPSON printers that are the complete opposite. Chipped cartridges that contain very little ink, a hard to clean printhead and an appallingly inaccurate paper feed system that does not allow multiple passes.
So this video is about forcing the lacklustre EPSON to produce acceptable black images on transparency film. The tests include non OEM dye ink and non OEM pigment ink in non OEM cartridges with utter contempt for EPSON's desire to sell very small portions of ink at prices that rival the cost of gold by weight.
There are various inks available for inkjet printers in the aftermarket. You can buy cheap and nasty dye inks that fade quickly, or better dye inks that have UV inhibitors to make the image last longer, or pigment based dyes that have a fine suspension of coloured particles to create a very solid image with good aging properties. There are also other specialist inks like dye sublimation inks for printing T-shirts and other stuff.
I did this test with generic dye ink that does fade quickly in sunshine, plus a much better pigment based ink. One day I'll probably try the test with a modern UV inhibiting ink too, but changing inks in a printer from one type to another is always a bit of a chore, especially in fixed head printers like the EPSONs.
I also did some toner tests too, but they were not under ideal conditions.
I tried various inkjet transparency films from ebay. The most expensive was the worst and the cheapest generic inkjet and laser compatible film was the best....
For the UV exposure I didn't use my normal lab-grade Mega Electronics tubes-in-lid A3 exposure system, but instead used a generic ebay nail varnish curing light with four UV tubes and a timer. This was just to see if it is usable as a home UV exposure unit.
The developing chemical I used was sodium metasilicate mixed in a ratio of 12g in 250ml of water. (roughly 1 to 20 ratio)
You can also cautiously use sodium hydroxide otherwise known as lye, caustic soda or drain cleaner if you want to see the etch resist disappear almost instantly (including the tracks) in a swirl of disappointment, leaving you with a shiny piece of blank copper laminate. But the sodium metasilicate is much easier to use, provides more consistent results and can be stored and reused until it is fully depleted. Sodium Metasilicate (water glass) is available from ebay.
To etch the PCBs I used standard ferric chloride etching solution in the extremely clean and convenient Seno GS etching system where the highly corrosive and staining chemical is always kept sealed in a bag during etching and washing of the PCBs. I do have a tri-tank PCB etching station, but for small quantities of PCBs the Seno bag system is extremely convenient.
The results so far? Pigment ink is the clear winner, but dye based ink is still a viable option.
I had been using a very old Canon Pixma IP4000 inkjet printer to make transparencies due to its ability to allow multiple passes of the same piece of paper with quite staggering accuracy. But alas, all good things come to an end, and one day the Canon decided to smoke its printhead. The loss of that printer was made worse by the fact it had unchipped ink cartridges that were very easy to refill, were translucent so you could see the actual ink level as you filled them and had an optical ink level detector that reliably informed you when the cartridge was actually running low. You could also physically unclip the print head and wash it for easy maintenance. Truly an engineers printer.
But now I've unwillingly ended up with two EPSON printers that are the complete opposite. Chipped cartridges that contain very little ink, a hard to clean printhead and an appallingly inaccurate paper feed system that does not allow multiple passes.
So this video is about forcing the lacklustre EPSON to produce acceptable black images on transparency film. The tests include non OEM dye ink and non OEM pigment ink in non OEM cartridges with utter contempt for EPSON's desire to sell very small portions of ink at prices that rival the cost of gold by weight.
There are various inks available for inkjet printers in the aftermarket. You can buy cheap and nasty dye inks that fade quickly, or better dye inks that have UV inhibitors to make the image last longer, or pigment based dyes that have a fine suspension of coloured particles to create a very solid image with good aging properties. There are also other specialist inks like dye sublimation inks for printing T-shirts and other stuff.
I did this test with generic dye ink that does fade quickly in sunshine, plus a much better pigment based ink. One day I'll probably try the test with a modern UV inhibiting ink too, but changing inks in a printer from one type to another is always a bit of a chore, especially in fixed head printers like the EPSONs.
I also did some toner tests too, but they were not under ideal conditions.
I tried various inkjet transparency films from ebay. The most expensive was the worst and the cheapest generic inkjet and laser compatible film was the best....
For the UV exposure I didn't use my normal lab-grade Mega Electronics tubes-in-lid A3 exposure system, but instead used a generic ebay nail varnish curing light with four UV tubes and a timer. This was just to see if it is usable as a home UV exposure unit.
The developing chemical I used was sodium metasilicate mixed in a ratio of 12g in 250ml of water. (roughly 1 to 20 ratio)
You can also cautiously use sodium hydroxide otherwise known as lye, caustic soda or drain cleaner if you want to see the etch resist disappear almost instantly (including the tracks) in a swirl of disappointment, leaving you with a shiny piece of blank copper laminate. But the sodium metasilicate is much easier to use, provides more consistent results and can be stored and reused until it is fully depleted. Sodium Metasilicate (water glass) is available from ebay.
To etch the PCBs I used standard ferric chloride etching solution in the extremely clean and convenient Seno GS etching system where the highly corrosive and staining chemical is always kept sealed in a bag during etching and washing of the PCBs. I do have a tri-tank PCB etching station, but for small quantities of PCBs the Seno bag system is extremely convenient.
The results so far? Pigment ink is the clear winner, but dye based ink is still a viable option.
How about a teardown and reverse engineering of the UV nail dryer box? I just bought one and it works well for dry film photoresist. Would love to see you take it to bits.
we've been using inkjet printers to make contact printing negatives since the mid 1990s, and they get the best results. Oh BTW, a blend of colour pigments can be just as UV resistant as a deep solid black saving ink, if you wanted to experiment.
ultrasonic cleaner thanx a bunch
<3 got some chocolate and im hitting play! : o p
When I've wanted to get black and white images I've used an image editing program (GIMP in my case), chosen grey scale and set the colour depth to two bit. The saved image then only has two values for colour, 000 or FFF. Nothing in the image file for the printer software to mess about with then.
On my HP Printer on Linux, I can just go into "Device Options" and select "Black only greyscale"…. I'm going to be doing some playing around with some old Epson's soon… I wonder if that option is a Linux/CUPS thing or an HP thing? It'll be worth putting "find out if black only still works" on my checklist.
for best results print the mask twice and tape them together for a more opaque black.
if your going to waste most of the film in the trash bin you may as well use up more of it.
Get a little computer fan and cut off all the blades except one and glue it to the exposure tub to agitate the solution automatically. 🙂
Etching PCBs: Dry-film, pre-sensitized, photoresist-spray? Positive? Negative? Developers? Cleaners?
Now I am confused.
What is what? The sellers don't tell anything.
I have that blue dry film fron China and Kontakt Chemie Positive-20 spray and I have no idea whether the transparency has to be negative or positive and if I can use Sodium Carbonate as developer for both.
Any idea anyone?
Thank you for your video, it is really helpful, I knew been awhile for this video but I have two questions please:
1-What is the minimum trace resolution we can get? Can we reach to Micro range? If not could you please advise for cheapest method if you have!
2-if we use silver nanoparticles ink and print it directly onto the transparent sheet, is this going to work?
Thank you
Hi, recently came to know your youtube channel. I am a big fan of you. I remember, making a Joule thief circuit , 10-12 years ago and how much fun it gave me. Thank for being an inspiration for me and others also. You are definitely "born with a soldering in hand." 😁
I couldn't get my Brother to lay down enough ink in one go, but after feeding the same inkjet transparency sheet through 4 times it built up an impressive amount of ink that let no light through. Never really completely dried, but it worked great as a mask. I was amazed at how precisely the printer feeds paper through, there was absolutely no offset from the 4 separate passes.
I have an HP PhotoSmart All-In-One 2575v, it’s ancient, but I bought a spare recently at Value Village for $15 because I like it so much, plus more modern printers seem to be designed purposely to make it extremely difficult to refill (not physically impossible, but the printer will absolutely refuse to use a cartridge it thinks is empty or expired), it uses the same cartridges as my portable HP printer, it’s easy to refill (I buy InkTec refill kits on Amazon for $10 which give me six refills). The lovely thing is that I can print using the black cartridge only, and blacks printed in best quality (1200x2400dpi for this printer) are really saturated on plain paper (when visually inspected under 60x magnification on my XP Pen A4 LED light table on the brightest setting [which will shine through twelve sheets of standard thickness multi-use printer paper enough to accurately trace an outline]).
Might have to experiment with transparencies and PCB etching.
Hi, I want to ask you about "OBO LAMINATING POUCH FILM GLOSS 216×303 mm 100 mic 100 PCS " could i use this for printing pcb on laser printer or this only for Laminating ?
I just ordered a laser printer for the sole purpose of etching PCBs using heat application (it hasn't arrived yet) so the part of the description saying that modern laser printers leave a thin layer of toner is a bit of a concern. However, preempting potential problems, I am wondering if defining the black in the software as C=100 M=100 Y=100 K=100 might provide a solution to the problem of thin toner layers. As the toner acts as a physical barrier, not an optical one, it doesn't matter what colour it is and this would in theory lay down four times as much toner. That said, I have never used a laser printer before but I was a graphic designer for many years and worked closely with printers of the human kind and often played with black definitions for litho printing for various reasons.
Could i use Epson EcoTank ITS L3060 Inkjet Multi-Function (Print + Scan + Copy) Colour Printer for print PCB on Glossy paper or Transperency paper?
another way to force true black printing is to remove the colour cartridges, just leaving the black one, thats what i do with my HP, if you have the other carts in it tries to mix the black from them, no matter what settings you use.