DIY PCB by glue & nail varnish

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

OK stop laughing.. I scored a stack of QST ham radio mags at the thrift!! and here's how one guy does his PCBs:

Print out the layout on paper.
Use rubber cement to stick it to the copper.
Then use an exacto knife to cut and remove the traces, so now the copper is exposed where the traces are wanted.
Now paint nail varnish where the traces are (the paper protects the rest of the board).
Once the varnish is dry, peel off the rest of the paper & rub the rubber cement off.
WOOHOO! Now you have a ready to etch PCB.
He claims 1mm is no problem. From my days in magazine layout days with an exacto and rubber cement, I'd agree.
Incidentally, those QST mags are great if you get them at 50c. Includes some basic electronic theory & even the ocassional compresser!

[pyrop]

Cool, will have to keep that one for a rainy day as they say!

pyrop

[Coriolis]

Cool!

But what about the rubber cement glueing the part of the paper with the trace on it?
Doesn't it get fiddly scraping that stuff off, when you've cut out the trace, and are getting ready to put on the polish?

I guess the much abused term "ye olde schoole" is actually warranted here...
Just because it's old doesn't mean it can't do the job, right? I've more or less given up on modern electronics publications, since they seem to focus mostly on pic's and processors and such, which, realistically, I probably won't ever get into.
So if you find anything else in those mags, give us a shout, yes? 

C

[gez]

In the days before I had a printer I used to use one of those marker pens, then I'd go over it with nail varnish.  It's a superb resist and you get really clean traces...takes forever to apply though.  If you make a mistake, best bet is to dab an ear bud in nail polish remover then tidy things up.

[markm]

Interesting indeed.
I guess we really take PnP Blue for granted huh!
  MarkM

[Mark Hammer]

That was almost exactly how I saw methods described in the 70's.  Given that the alternative was generally photoresist, surgical removal of paper and use of nail polish was pretty darn easy by comparison.  (I tried making my own phot-etch boards, using the spray-on sensitizer, and I could never get a decent layer.)  When I got my first spring-loaded centre-punch, I though I had died and gone to heaven.  I would tape a photocopy of the board layout to the copper side and pop a dimple with my centre punch in the drill-point of every pad.  Then I would take my pen and join the dots, making sure Ikept my finger-juice off the board by covering the board with plastic wrap where I wasn't drawing. 

And THAT was a quantum leap above what I had been doing with X-acto knives and nail polish.

These days....you get your schems for nothing and your boards for free.

[MartyB]

Seems unnecessarily tedious with the exacto knife, but  I also discovered the nail polish trick for myself (live with three girls) a couple years ago.  If the layout is more than a little complex you can punchmark dimples onto the copperclad directly through a paper printout of the pcb traces, or even drill the holes first.  Then just paint the traces on - sorta like connect-the-dots.  Of course you need a fine tip on your brush and a steady hand.

[phaeton]

A pair of scissors could probably make the tip on the brush about as fine as you'd ever want it


Interesting methodology though.  Thanks for sharing!

[Paul Marossy]

Wow. That sounds very tedious.

[Satch12879]

Wow. That sounds very tedious.

+1

I'll stick to photoresist boards and ExpressPCB