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Step 5 Making the PCB

Cutting to size

First you cut the PCB you want to make from the printed sheet. Next you'l need to cut some PCB material a little bit bigger than your design. (the trick is to cut with a hobby knife into the copper and than break it on the edge of the table). Before you do anything else, it is wise to check if your design fits your copper. Now it is a good idea to clean the copper side of the PCB material with some kind of solvent. (be smart, wear rubber gloves!)


Transferring the design to the copper

(this method I learned from Make:)
You put your iron as hot as it will get and you heat up the copper by just pressing the iron down on it. (be sure to use a surface than can handle the heat, like a ironing board)
Now comes the hard part: You must place the transparent sheet, with the printed side down on the hot copper. This must go right the first time and you must be very careful not to move it anymore, once it touched the copper. The toner (laser printer-ink) will melt directly on the copper. Now without moving the sheet on the copper, put a sheet of normal, not printed, paper on top of it and iron it again.
Now carefully remove the transparent sheet from the copper and, if everything went well, your design is on the copper.

In my case, two of the three PCB's I did went OK, but one wasn't so great. To fix up this handicapped PCB, I took a sharpy and filled in the missing lines.

(be very careful when you remove the sheet from the copper, because the copper is very, very hot by now)


Etching the PCB

Now the real fun starts.
Wear the proper protection and be sure that your workspace is well ventilated and you have plenty of clean water nearby.
Prepare the etching solution according to the instructions of the manufacturer. (this is serious stuff, so don't mess with this)
There are different kinds of etching solutions and different methods of etching. I use the brown ferro stuff. (this stuff will stain anything) I noticed that the method in the Make: video washes away the sharpy-lines, so I just let the etching-solution do its work and I just rock the dish a little until I see that all the copper that was visible is etched away. Now I take the PCB out of the solution and wash it with plenty of water.