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Sadder but wiser

Morris Odell All Messages By This Member #36935 Hi all, ? I had an unpleasant experience recently but fortunately not a complete disaster. ? I have been making PCBs for years using the toner transfer method. The software I use is Sprint PCB and I have used a succession of HP laser printers. Recently I had to get a new printer and went for a Brother. It works very nicely and the toner actually seemed to give better coverage than the HP. After I made my first PCB which was a little one with a few passive components and transistors on it everything looked pretty good and I was quite happy. ? Yesterday I made a bigger board with several DIP packages on it and it still looked good. But when I went to populate it, it became apparent that the new printer was producing images that were slightly too small. Sprint allows a calibration factor to be specified and after some experimentation it turns out that factor of 1.04 gives properly sized images. ? All it cost me was some time and some PCB material but it was quite frustrating and a waste of a few hours. ? So be warned - if you change software or a printer make sure you check the sizing before making a board! ? Regards to all, ? Morris ? ?
Clark Cone All Messages By This Member #36936 Morris, what is your calibration method, please? Clark Cone toggle quoted message Show quoted text On Sun, Aug 25, 2024 at 7:20?PM Morris Odell via <vilgotch1=[email protected]> wrote: Hi all, ? I had an unpleasant experience recently but fortunately not a complete disaster. ? I have been making PCBs for years using the toner transfer method. The software I use is Sprint PCB and I have used a succession of HP laser printers. Recently I had to get a new printer and went for a Brother. It works very nicely and the toner actually seemed to give better coverage than the HP. After I made my first PCB which was a little one with a few passive components and transistors on it everything looked pretty good and I was quite happy. ? Yesterday I made a bigger board with several DIP packages on it and it still looked good. But when I went to populate it, it became apparent that the new printer was producing images that were slightly too small. Sprint allows a calibration factor to be specified and after some experimentation it turns out that factor of 1.04 gives properly sized images. ? All it cost me was some time and some PCB material but it was quite frustrating and a waste of a few hours. ? So be warned - if you change software or a printer make sure you check the sizing before making a board! ? Regards to all, ? Morris ? ?
Morris Odell All Messages By This Member #36937 Hi Clark, ? If you are using Sprint-PCB,? when you click on the Print icon a window opens for printing. Along the top of that window there is a series of buttons for various functions including a "Calibrate" one that allows you to set a calibration factor for vertical and horizontal printing. ? That's what I use in Sprint, I don't know whether other software packages have anything similar. ? Regards, ? Morris
Morris Odell All Messages By This Member #36938 Hi again Clark, ? I calibrated the printer by printing successive images on plain paper with different cal factors and measuring them until I got it right. A bit wasteful of paper but better that using anything more expensive. Also I had the printer set for A4 paper. I think US Letter will give a different image size again and will require a different cal factor. The printer is a Brother MFC-L8690 ? Morris
Steven Greenfield AE7HD All Messages By This Member #36939 Great advice! They are only thinking of printing letters for office use, and we come along with our odd purposes. -- Steven Greenfield AE7HD
Clark Cone All Messages By This Member #36940 got it! Thanks! Clark toggle quoted message Show quoted text On Mon, Aug 26, 2024 at 7:12?PM Morris Odell via <vilgotch1=[email protected]> wrote: Hi again Clark, ? I calibrated the printer by printing successive images on plain paper with different cal factors and measuring them until I got it right. A bit wasteful of paper but better that using anything more expensive. Also I had the printer set for A4 paper. I think US Letter will give a different image size again and will require a different cal factor. The printer is a Brother MFC-L8690 ? Morris
Tony Smith All Messages By This Member #36941 开云体育 The usual way is to print a 100x100mm square, then measure it.? Suppose you measure it at 101mm, your scaling factor becomes 100/101, or 99%. ? If the software can’t do it then the print dialog has a “Scale” entry, so you’d type in 99%, print it and measure again. ? If like most people you’re laying things out on a 0.1” grid (even us metric folk do that), a quick dummy check is you grab a 40 pin header and put it up against the component holes and see if it matches up. ? Tony ? toggle quoted message Show quoted text From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Clark Cone via groups.io Sent: Wednesday, 28 August 2024 10:35 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [homebrewpcbs] Sadder but wiser ? got it! Thanks! Clark ? On Mon, Aug 26, 2024 at 7:12?PM Morris Odell via <vilgotch1=[email protected]> wrote: Hi again Clark, ? I calibrated the printer by printing successive images on plain paper with different cal factors and measuring them until I got it right. A bit wasteful of paper but better that using anything more expensive. Also I had the printer set for A4 paper. I think US Letter will give a different image size again and will require a different cal factor. The printer is a Brother MFC-L8690 ? Morris

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