Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Copper Plating Wire Glue
Anyway, it seemed to work, and after a few attempts there were some important findings:
- The resistor shown was roughly 10mm long and its resistance came to 2kΩ, so it looks like wire glue has a sufficiently high resistance to make useful resistors. Unsurprisingly the copper plated sections had a resistance of 0Ω, and could be soldered to very easily (unlike the circuit produced using the solder extruder).
- The track needs to be connected to the power supply both before and after each "resistor". Otherwise, the track is only plated up to the buried section of wire glue.
- The entire copper plating process is much more even if a small amount of sulphuric acid (car battery acid) is added to the copper plating solution.
- We need to be able to make several sections of track per PCB, and it is going to be a bit of pain to connect each section to the power supply. As an alternative, I included a small "bridge" whereby the track is only supported by a small section of ABS, such that it is easy to snap out afterwards to create two independent tracks. It seemed to work (see pic below), although its not as clean as I would like, but a support material extruder would help with this enormously.
- It is very important to leave the wire glue to dry sufficiently (at least a few hours). I did make a few attempts where the glue was not completely cured, and virtually no plating was achieved, even when left overnight.
- I did try producing the PCB using PLA on Darwin - it seems our infill settings result in the structure being porous. Of course, this could be easily remedied by altering the settings. However, if we change the infill such that some parts of the structure are porous and some aren't, we can allow the copper sulphate solution to seep into the structure; allowing track to be plated that is contained within plastic. This may prove very useful later on if we ever get around to doing things in 3D.
Now where is that paste extruder.....
Labels: circuit, copper plating, wire glue
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
You can't spread a bit of CAPA on your copper
Yesterday I bought a piece of copper-clad board and tried sticking it under Zaphod. The idea being to deposit a trail of CAPA on the copper and then etch the exposed copper. Unfortunately, it looks like copper makes a nigh on perfect non-stick surface for CAPA extrusions. Even after cleaning with contact cleaner and cranking up the heat, I couldn't get any CAPA at all to stick to the copper.
Looks like time for plan B; the etch resist pen.
Vik :v)
Looks like time for plan B; the etch resist pen.
Vik :v)
Labels: board, capa, circuit, etch, pcb, polymorph, track
