which laminator should I buy for doing toner transfer
开云体育I learned about toner transfer and laminators 20 years ago before I owned a laser printer. I bought a "good" laminator and then followed the instructions to
modify it to be a higher temperature of? 340 degrees to meet the
toner melting point requirement. BIG mistake there. Because the laminator drive gear that is press fit on the rollers is made of nylon which has a melting point higher than ID card plastic ( the
purpose for a laminator ) so raising the temperature to accommodate TONER transfer melted the nylon drive gear so then the roller did not turn and the artwork and PCB just cooked in one spot and seized the roller. and then I moved on to the simple press method. with 3 ten pound steel 6 inch square? plates. More details here:
The laminator melt down experiment here:
Over the many months of working through the laminator problems of motor speed and heat temperature control I also was chasing a cheaper laminator. So just out of curiosity bought an AL9 detail tear down here: The AL9 cost $17 and upon examining what it was made of .... mostly plastic .... I thought it would be a bad idea to increase its heat control beyond its factory 293 degree limit.
So.....?? considering that 1 inch thick steel plates... in six inch squares....? can cost you $75 to mail order..... shipping 30 pounds of steel is not cheap..... I was hoping to find a laminator that did 340 degrees... that cost around $20... something we could pound with the kids and leave in school.
Have any of you found a cheap laminator that does toner transfer in one pass?
Rob
On 11/13/2019 12:18 AM, AA9GG wrote:
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stefan_trethan
Hi Rob, No matter how hard I pressed, with a flat plate I could not get good, even transfer. So I used what seemed most logical to melt toner - a fuser unit from an old laser printer or copier. One of the rollers was silicone, so it conformed very well to the PCB and paper stack, it worked?single?pass. To drive it I used a heavily geared motor from a chicken grill, and I made the temperature controller myself. One might use the printer drivetrain, but I had to run it much slower than the printer, to allow for the large thermal mass of the PCB. ST On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 3:15 PM Rob via Groups.Io <roomberg=[email protected]> wrote:
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I follow simple cloths iron in its max temperature.? For lDt decade ir so not many failures unless the toner registration on the paper itself was bad. On Wed, 13 Nov 2019, 8:03 pm stefan_trethan, <stefan_trethan@...> wrote:
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开云体育OK guys......?? I do agree.... we all chased another solution instead of a laminator....... BUT I asked the question "Have any of you found a cheap laminator that does toner transfer in one pass?"
because I was hoping to find a laminator that did 340
degrees... that cost around $20... something we could pound with
the kids or I could use my 30 pound steel plates on a hot plate or I could use a clothes iron as a demonstration with kids BUT I can not leave any of those items unattended and have? some kid burn themselves. Even a simple clothes iron can be a real bad burn. and even if I manufacture a housing to keep fingers out of a fuser project ...... I would have to deal with the administration declaring its not SAFE ...a fire hazard.... because its an experimental appliance ...not a UL listed appliance. Its pretty strict. Teachers are not even allowed to keep a simple drip coffee maker in their classroom. The goal here is to inspire the kids to actually build something. Right now... there is all sorts of STEAM (not steam engines) electronics projects available to the kids that are tiny baby steps... rather useless but inspiring..... SCRATCH FOR ARDUINO and the kids easily can play with ARDUINOs and RASPberry Pi and all sorts of breadboarding BUT nobody ..kids ....is crossing the line to build anything permanent on a PCB until 10 years later when they finally get to it in college.... and slog through GERBER file creation. SO all I am saying here is that it would be nice to share what we already know how to do on the kitchen table with these kids and give them a good head start in PCB creation. I found that once I knew how to make a PCB in very short time, I never went back to breadboarding again. =============================================================================================== mvssarma: I follow simple cloths iron in its max
temperature.? For a decade or so not many failures unless the
toner registration on the paper itself was bad. ==================================================================================================== I as well went back to the iron method. Much
quicker and more satisfactory results. One thing I did was look
at the msds sheet for the toner. I was able to get the melting
point of the toner and use an IR thermometer to monitor various
points on the pcb during the ironing process.? Once I reached at
least the melting point I'd stop.? There was always spots
hotter, but it didnt seem to be a problem. |
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I don't know of any that will do in one pass but this one has worked well for me and is the same one that PCB Fab-in-a-Box recommends. Shop around you may find it for less. I have tried quite a few and this one works well and has a temperature adjustment.
IIRC this is where I bought mine. PCB Fab in a Box: Good luck! Sam |
Sam Reaves