Press n Peel Blue printing question.

[skiraly017]

I have used the SEARCH button, so either I'm being dense or couldn't find what I was looking for.

Can I print directly on PnP Blue? All the tutorials I've found show PCB traces that are cut from a printed source with the PnP taped to it. But what if I have a layout already in my PC? Do I just print directly to the PnP or do I have to print it out on regular paper? And I'm a little confused about the transfer process...after taping the PnP to the layout, I'm assuming I run it through a LaserJet printer to make the transfer but am I just printing a blank page in order to get the printer to cycle through? Thanks.

[mdh]

The taping PNP to a piece of paper thing is just a way to print a single layout at a time. You tape it to the paper to make sure the registration is close enough to actally get the toner on the PNP. If you would like, you certainly can feed a sheet of PNP and print on that. If you do that, it makes sense to make a whole page of layouts so that you can fill up the sheet of PNP in one go. Sometimes that can be hard, though, because how often do you know the next 10-20 pcb layouts you'll want to etch?

In either case, you're printing the layout to the PNP.

[markm]

I suggest doing one at a time to avoid potential errors.
Printing onto a plain sheet just give you the approximate area that is going to be printed on and allows the user to attach a small portion of the PNP sheet for printing. This can help to get more mileage from a sheet of PNP.

[MikeH]

There's a tutorial at tonepad.com that's pretty idiot-proof.  I'd reccomend checking it out.

[skiraly017]

There's a tutorial at tonepad.com that's pretty idiot-proof.  I'd reccomend checking it out.

I did but it doesn't answer one of my questions. You -

1) Print out a layout on regular paper.
2) Cut your PnP Blue to the appropriate size.
3) Tape PnP blue to the regular paper.
4) Then do something with the "frankenstein" paper.

But what do you do? I can see that you lay it in the paper tray of the LaserJet, but what do you do then? Run off a blank Word document? How does the layout on the regular paper get transferred to the PnP? This is where I get confused.

[Meanderthal]

 You print it again. The reason to print it on paper first is just to show where on the paper it will be printed, and I guess also to verify that it's being printed to the proper scale.

[Mark Hammer]

It is always good practice to print out the patterns on paper first to see what the printout will look like, adjust darkness/contrast, and size, etc., particularly given the price and inconvenience of running out of PnP sheets.  Like they say in carpentry: measure twice, cut once.