Tuesday 4 May 2010

Mendel home-made stepper boards

A productive weekend: I used the laserprinter technique to make four more single-sided stepper drivers.
I experimented with plain paper, baking paper, greaseproof paper, oiled paper, but the best transfers were with my cheap label backing paper.
To economise on the amount of label paper, I cut a section roughly a bit larger than the PCB, and stuck it to a clean A4 sheet with some of the discarded stickers. This then goes through the laserprinter.
From StepperPCBs

I then took off this section, bent it over the PCB and taped it down, then ran it through my laminator a couple of times. This transferred the toner to the PCB.
From StepperPCBs

After etching, I had four new stepper boards to build
From StepperPCBs

2 comments:

The Editor said...

You know that I posted a milling-toolhead and adapted visolate to do
very efficient PCB-milling on a
3d-printer?

Unknown said...

Yep. It's one of the best alternatives to home PCB making.
I've got a BitsFromBytes machine but it needs a bit of love to get it tuned up, it's been shuffled backwards and forwards to the garage several times, and basically needs a serious adjustment and overhaul. We're planning an extension to the house later this year, which will finally give me some proper space for a RepRap workshop, so I can really get going.