PCB Newbie - Software and Paper

[mydementia]

Hi guys.
I dove head first into the world of etching my own PCB's this weekend.  With the closure of so many of my local Rat Shacks, I've compiled a rather inexpensive bunch of etching gear...so here we go.

1) What software do you guys use to set up your circuits for printing?  I collected enough to fill an 8.5x11 sheet (ish) and broke them into the two sizes of board I have (3x4.5 and 4.5x6.125).  I did all this in Excel (which usually does exactly what I want!).  After sizing all the boards (using a vertical and horizital 0.1" reference 'line') I tried printing to both my house printers...the sizing was hosed (long in the horizontal and short in the vertical).  I explained the situation to the guys at the local print shop (Kinkos) and they got the same results on all three printers they tried - stuipd Microsoft (?).  I 'faked' the file to print the right size (after several attempts) at home and went back to Kinkos.  This time it printed exactly right on the test sheet but when the guy printed on the photo paper, the black was bluish with strange gaps in the traces - wtf?  The Kinkos 'employee of the year' told me - in front of his manager - that was the best they could do with their equipment and that the ink doesn't fuse all that well to their photo paper...again - wtf?  I won't be going back to that store...   Anyway - the question here is what (free?) software do you use to size your PCBs for printing?  It would be nice to be able to create and flip snazzy text too (not immediately obvious to me how to do this in Excel).

2) Do y'all pretty much iron on one circuit at a time or have you had success doing a whole board and chopping it up later?  I tried doing a whole 3x4.5" board at once...the only traces that came out well enough to etch were my four Milennium Bypass circuits...so those were the ones I completed last night.  Tonight I'm going to follow more of the instructions here...warm the board for 1 minute, iron for 4 minutes, quench in cold water, soak in hot-soapy water for 15 minutes, peel off paper, clean paper residue, etch and drill. I overdid the ironing in a couple places (traces were big splotches) and hurried the soaking last night... I'll do better!

3) I'm using the big fat Rat Shack double sided 2oz boards at the moment (at least I get four tries per ironing attempt)... anyone have a recommendation on where to get 1oz single sided boards that are somewhat translucent when etched?

4) Ferric Chloride: I realize mileage varies by board type, but how many 1" x 2" boards can you get out of one bath?  When it's spent, does it just stop eating the copper, or does it create a weird layer of goo on it?

I also picked up a drill press fixture for my dremel at Harbor Freight this weekend ($14 - couldn't pass it up).  I need to make a shim to get the play out of the the guide - but for this application, I think it's going to work great (and it cost $45 less than the 'dremel' brand press).  If you've never been to a Harbor Freight store and you like tinkering, I highly recommend the trip!

I never would have tried this if it weren't for this forum and the fabulous 'SEARCH' function!  The wealth of knowledge found here (and links) continues to astound me... hopefully I'll be able to give a small piece back at some point in time.  I'm still trying to get the basics down...

Thanks for looking.

Mike

[mdh]

Hi guys.
I dove head first into the world of etching my own PCB's this weekend.  With the closure of so many of my local Rat Shacks, I've compiled a rather inexpensive bunch of etching gear...so here we go.

1) What software do you guys use to set up your circuits for printing?  I collected enough to fill an 8.5x11 sheet (ish) and broke them into the two sizes of board I have (3x4.5 and 4.5x6.125).  I did all this in Excel (which usually does exactly what I want!).  After sizing all the boards (using a vertical and horizital 0.1" reference 'line') I tried printing to both my house printers...the sizing was hosed (long in the horizontal and short in the vertical).  I explained the situation to the guys at the local print shop (Kinkos) and they got the same results on all three printers they tried - stuipd Microsoft (?).  I 'faked' the file to print the right size (after several attempts) at home and went back to Kinkos.  This time it printed exactly right on the test sheet but when the guy printed on the photo paper, the black was bluish with strange gaps in the traces - wtf?  The Kinkos 'employee of the year' told me - in front of his manager - that was the best they could do with their equipment and that the ink doesn't fuse all that well to their photo paper...again - wtf?  I won't be going back to that store...   Anyway - the question here is what (free?) software do you use to size your PCBs for printing?  It would be nice to be able to create and flip snazzy text too (not immediately obvious to me how to do this in Excel).

Inkscape: http://inkscape.sourceforge.net. It's a full-featured vector graphics editor, but it's also really handy for importing and scaling raster images, which is how almost everyone distributes pcb masks. On top of that, in my experience it always prints things at the scale that it says it will. If you have to take the artwork to a printer, it might be good to at least print to a postscript file, and possibly convert it to pdf. If you do that, make sure that you get the paper size right (in Document settings in Inkscape), or you might run into scaling problems.

3) I'm using the big fat Rat Shack double sided 2oz boards at the moment (at least I get four tries per ironing attempt)... anyone have a recommendation on where to get 1oz single sided boards that are somewhat translucent when etched?

Small Bear Electronics has 1oz single-sided boards that are very nice. If you're in California, Fry's Electronics actually carries the same stuff as Small Bear at a comparable price, IIRC.

4) Ferric Chloride: I realize mileage varies by board type, but how many 1" x 2" boards can you get out of one bath?  When it's spent, does it just stop eating the copper, or does it create a weird layer of goo on it?

I find that as a batch of FeCl3 gets old, etch times go way up, and I have to be more vigilant about agitation. If it's taking too long, I just add some fresh etchant, and that tends to speed it up. As for goo, there will be a sludge of metallic iron precipitate at the bottom of the bath, and sometimes it will seem that it is sticking to the board more than other times. The sludge will rinse off if you agitate the board in the bath, though. I can't really say how many boards you'll be able to etch per volume etchant, though. The double-sided boards will, of course, spend etchant faster (there is a post somewhere on here about sanding the copper down on the unused side of the board, making it easier and faster to etch SS boards on DS copper clad, and using less etchant).

Have fun!
Matt