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I've finished a simple design for PC board holders for use with a microscope. It's pretty rigid, and does not rotate. It's made of 2020 aluminum extrusion and corner brackets. These are available as parts to help make 3D printers. The board holder itself (gold anodized aluminum) was a one time buy. You could duplicate that, or use a PC board holder from Panavise. Those would need support. That's the part where you'd need a machine shop at your disposal. There's another option, and that's to take some aluminum bar stock, I'd use 1 x 1/4 by whatever length. Drill evenly spaced holes in four three inch sections. Those take thumbnuts (or capscrews) and mount on the side rails. To hold the board, you'd really like to have a lathe. I'd cut v shaped grooves around the circumference of an aluminum post and mount that so that the board edge is held by the groove. If you can't do that, then simply take some aluminum spacers, fasten them to the ends of the aluminum bars, and let those to into the mounting holes on your boards. You'll find that the angle brackets do allow the extrusion to twist, so I'd recommend top plates for 90 degree corners. If you wanted to, you could add some lights, perhaps the gooseneck lamps that IKEA sells... Harvey

I have not seen anyone mention Edsyn solder stations. They used to be a pretty decent station. Have they fallen out of favor? I still have some of their SoldaPullt mechanical solder suckers. Thank you. Jim Pruitt

@Harvey, I picked up an older PS2E-01 from ebay without a soldering pencil and it was listed as "tested-good". I got the unit and both lights appear to be on when powered up. Is that all it takes to be tested or do I need an iron to be sure it works? I missed out on a soldering pencil as I was sick and had a rough day with other stuff that day and missed the bidding. Also, are the new pencils from China any good or are they to be avoided? Thanks, Dave p.s All my carbide drills arrived along with other goodies that I have been waiting on. :) Hopefully I got the best sizes.

Partially used? I know the bottle of mine swelled up a bit. Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Tablet -------- Original message -------- From: Jim Higgins <HigginsJ@...> Date: 3/24/19 2:05 PM (GMT-06:00) To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [homebrewpcbs] [ Who cares what the disadvantages may be of something you can't get, and would be foolish to even try, in the first place? But let's introduce something really annoying to the discussion... some facts. 35% H2O2 holds its strength very well when properly stored. In an air conditioned environment, with no contamination having been introduced, loss of strength by 1% in a year wouldn't be surprising. Contaminate it and it can "lose its strength" so fast that the bottle explodes. "They" didn't stop selling it. A legitimate lab can buy all it needs from any of a number of chemical supply houses - none of which are named "Amazon," and few if any of which will ship to a residential address. The cost is prohibitive for a hobbiest because of the legally imposed packaging requirements for shipping anything over 12% H2O2. Received from dale.chatham at 3/24/2019 06:13 AM UTC: >I wonder if they stopped selling 35% because it is used to make explosives? > >Another disadvantage of 35% is that once opened, it doesn't stay 35% for long. > > > >-------- Original message -------- >From: Jim Higgins <HigginsJ@...> >Date: 3/23/19 22:11 (GMT-06:00) >To: [email protected] >Subject: Re: [homebrewpcbs] Bubble Tank DIY Plans > >Received from Dave at 3/24/2019 02:25 AM UTC: > > >I have a bottle of FeCI from RatShack I bought 15 years or more ago still > >unopened. Read all kinds of stories about that stuff. Being I am a noob just > >starting I read all the comments and I may try different methods so this is > >just another note in my toolbox. > > >I don't like ferric chloride (FeCl3) because the solution is too dark to >observe the progress of the etching and it doesn't change color appreciably >as it becomes spent so you don't know it's spent until it doesn't work. That >and it makes for stains that are very hard to remove. > >That said, if none of that bothers you, it works just fine for etching copper >and it can be rejuvenated by bubbling air thru it. Etch and rejuvenate enough >and you'll need to add a bit of HCl too. I guess you'll know when adding a >bit of HCl is necessary when it won't etch copper properly even after >extensive rejuvenation. The color of the solution prevents seeing when it >isn't properly rejuvenated so you can't tell when to add HCl until you're >disappointed in the results. > >I see people saying ferric chloride is "sludgy." If it's sludgy it's probably >badly spent and/or overconcentrated from repeated use and repeated >rejuvenation. sludgy solution just needs rejuvenating with bubbled air (or >H2O2) and probably a bit of HCl also. And some water if too heavily loaded >with copper. Properly maintained solution won't be sludgy. The thing is... at >this point you're also etching with the cupric chloride the solution also >contains... so just start out with cupric chloride and have a solution that's >nicer to work with and easier to see if it needs rejuvenation. > >Jim H > > > > > >

OVERVIEW: This is a simple procedure for preparing 1 liter of cupric chloride etching solution. The tradeoff for the simplicity is a bit of patience as it may take a while to complete the preparation. The value of this patience is that the resulting solution won't be overburdened with hydrochloric acid and thus won't be as smelly and as corrosive to materials around it as more quickly prepared solutions tend to be. It also won't have any residual hydrogen peroxide which will result in a very slightly lower tendency to undercut your PCB traces. That last effect is really quite small, but why not? Also, since we won't be depending on the presence of H2O2 once the etching solution is prepared, we don't have to worry about over diluting our solution by trying to regenerate it with the weak 3% H2O2 commonly available in drugstores. We'll be regenerating with an air bubbler, which can serve double duty to agitate the solution when etching. MATERIALS: One large (at least 2 liter/0.5 gallon) glass container with a plastic lid. A 1/2 gallon "iced tea" jar with a plastic lid (plastic liner or no liner) and a small pop open spout would be ideal because you can open the spout to insert a fritted glass bubbler for use in rejuvenating the solution after use. If you need more than 1 liter (1 qt) of solution, consider using a larger container and increase the amounts of materials below accordingly. I suggest the container be only about half full when done. Only partially full plus a small opening in the lid keeps any spray resulting from regeneration by air bubbling inside the glass container. One small aquarium pump. The cheap vibrating kind is fine. One fritted glass bubbler, preferably long enough that it can reach the bottom of the large glass container with at least an inch or more of glass tube sticking out - preferably. If you can't find one that long, then your plastic tubing will extend into the container. I don't like that, but that's just me. Plastic tubing to connect the pump to the fritted glass bubbler. I like enough tubing that I can place my pump higher then the top of my jar. Not likely the solution will syphon out if the pump is lower, but it's 100% impossible if it's higher. 200 grams (7 oz) copper wire, copper pipe or other pure copper. I used solid copper wire, but stranded copper will dissolve faster for those in a hurry. Pennies (even the old type) and misc plumbing hardware aren't pure copper and are unsuitable. 200 gms of copper is about 14 feet of #10 copper wire. Hydrochloric (muriatic) acid concrete driveway cleaner, free of detergent or other additives. (Read the label.) This should be 32 - 37% HCl. Weaker will work, but will require more. You can get this at Home Depot, Lowes and assorted hardware stores. It will probably cost more at pool supply places. Hydrogen peroxide. The typical 3% solution from the drugstore is fine. You only need a few ounces. SOLUTION PREPARATION: Pour 1 liter (4-1/4 cups) of water into your container and mark the level on the outside of the container. Pour out the water. This is the level you will want to maintain later after etching and rejuvenating. Add the copper to the glass container. Place 0.6 liters (2.5 cups) of hydrochloric acid in the glass container. Add 0.1 liter (0.5 cup) of hydrogen peroxide. This should be all the hydrogen peroxide you'll ever need. The copper wire will begin dissolving as evidenced by a green color forming in the solution and bubbles being generated on the surface of the copper wire. Place the lid on the container, open the spout and insert the fritted glass bubbler connected to aquarium pump and begin bubbling to mix the solution. Here's where patience comes in... continue bubbling until the copper wire is completely dissolved. If the solution becomes a brownish, possibly muddy, color, add 1oz of hydrochloric acid and continue bubbling until the wire is completely dissolved AND the solution is a deep emerald green. The color will be fairly dark, so hold the solution up to a bright light, or pour a bit into a smaller container, to gauge the color.

So I want to build a bubble tank. Anybody have any best methods or DIY plans? I am pretty sure my boards will remain small for the foreseeable future so I don't think I need an aquarium. :) I assume plastic is the best after glass and likely no metal parts touching the solution. An aquarium pump should work, proven designs are what I am after. Thanks

I'm not a chemist. Some of you guys a talking chemistry I haven't seen since high school 42 years ago. I etch with Muriatic acid and peroxide ...... 30% HCl 3% H2O2 http://www.learnmorsecode.com/ch/IMG_7308.JPG which is diluted with a LOT of water. What is the advantage of using tanks and bubblers and all these precision mixtures calculations? I add 50ml of HCL to 100ml H202 and it always "just works". http://www.learnmorsecode.com/ch/index.html

What is the model number to look for as I see a lot of older units on ebay? Any Metcal? I was looking on ebay this morning and had Kester 186, some tweezers, and a suction pickup tool on my list. :) I have used solder wick in the past. I also have a Hakko solder remover with a vacuum pump. Thanks for the tips.

Jim I remember the country store well. I got a lot of good "stuff" there. What good memories. Gene -------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: [homebrewpcbs] Soldering Stations To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, March 14, 2019, 6:24 PM Hello Dave. Since this was going to the list I thought the group might be interested in the discussion. The one station that I was aware of was this one: https://www.howardelectronics.com/soldering/soldering-stations/by-manufacturer/edsyn/951sx/edsyn-951sx-loner-soldering-station/ or: http://www.edsyn.com/category/ST.html and select Soldering Stations and Irons. I know they used to be a pretty good system and were considered professional quality but at $150 for the station it puts it higher than the cost of many of the Chinese clones. By the way, The SoldaPullt is now an Edsyn brand. Like you, I have a few Soldapullt's some of which I got over 30 years ago and they came from the Tektronix "country store" which was used and surplus parts and equipment at Tektronix in Beaverton, OR so they were used when I got them, all except one. Now I look for replacement tips for them. Thank you. Jim Pruitt Jim, I have a SoldaPullt Pro solder sucker I bought probably 20 years ago.I also have a Hakko vacuum desolder pump:-) Never heard of the Edsyn brand though. Thanks, Dave On 3/14/2019 1:54 PM, Jim Pruitt wrote: I have not seen anyone mention Edsyn solder stations. They used to be a pretty decent station. Have they fallen out of favor? I still have some of their SoldaPullt mechanical solder suckers. Thank you. Jim Pruitt On 3/14/2019 6:21 AM, David Jones via Groups.Io wrote: Yep, I've almost bought a Hakko several times. Probably will get one of those eventually. Right now I do have a cheap Chinese SMT/hot air station. So it's better than nothing. Still tend to use my old cheap RS station. Most the SMD stuff I do isn't that fine. Occasionally as small as 805 but usually larger. David

I have watched a few vidoes on OpenSCAD but that will have to wait. Too many irons in the fire. Actually FreeCAD is Free and Fusion360 has a hobby license that too is FREE, if you make less than 6 figures a year with it. I am eligible. :) Yes, very good advice. I think all my life I had so many interests I tries to do them all, but none with focus. I wrote a software program and sold/sell it as shareware and that was a ride. Spent a good year getting it good and years later I was still finding bugs in it. My beta testers were worthless. But that is to be expected when they don't understand what the software was for. :) They always say, "your customers are your best beta testers". I think I still have a UV light to erase the EPROM's and may even have the EPROM burner. I know I sold one but I usually have a spare of just about everything. I have a bunch of EPROM's too. Thanks

After seeing some guys post on leaving his etchant tank out in his shop, and the next day his drill press post was solid rust... I was thinking that I really don't want to mess up my steel building or anything in it. That said, if I use the muriatic/peroxide etchant outside, and then pour it into a sealed container, I should be ok? Or if not if I really want to be sure, what is the best of the other etchants that works the fastest with no worry of rusting my stuff? Or am I being too paranoid? Thanks

Hello, Recently, started using photo resist technique for making printed circuit boards (PCB). One of the steps in this technique I'm having difficulty with, is making sure there are no air bubbles between the photo resist sheet and the PCB. So far I've only been successful on small boards, 4" x 5", 3" x 6", etc in clearing the air bubbles, but not larger boards, e.g., 6" x 8". I would like to use the photo resist technique to make larger boards in the 8" x 11" range but, I'm hesitant to try due to my lack of understanding of how to remove all air bubbles on the larger boards. I've made a 6" x 8" board but, could not remove all the small air bubbles, approximately 1/8" dia. or less, between the photo resist sheet and the PCB. The board did turn out okay but, believe I got "lucky" with no small air bubbles on any of the traces or component pads. Prior to being exposed to the UV light the PCB with the photo resist sheet was run through a laminator but, the remaining small bubbles were not removed. Not sure my luck would hold if tried to make another 6" x 8" board. I have used toner transfer for larger boards, but had too many broken traces and spotty transfer of the toner on the board. Neither using a clothes iron nor a variable temperature laminator gave consistent good transfer of the toner to the larger boards. YouTube was searched for an answer and a number of videos on making PCBs using the photo resist technique have been reviewed. However, only small boards, less than 6" x 8", were in the videos. There were several different approaches used to get the photo resist on to the board and removing air bubbles, but again, these approaches were used for less than 6" x 8" PCBs. I'm sure I haven't seen all the YouTube videos on making PCB using photo resist, so maybe there is one or more showing how to apply the photo resist to the larger PCBs and end up without any air bubbles, small or large, between the photo resist and the PCB. V/R, Mike, K4GMH -- Mike, K4GMH

I bought a new Proxxon TBM115. It will arrive tomorrow. :-) I have never made even one circuit board yet and now is the time to get going after wanting and trying to do this for many many years. Something else always got it the way. I spent half the day trying to get a pdf of my simple little circuit to print after replacing an empty toner cartridge in my HP LaserJet 1022. Seems Adobe has some issues printing certain pdf's with Win7. I uninstalled and reinstalled and did everything I could find online including using an older version but got nowhere. But I could upload my pdf to my server and then open it in Firefox and print it from there??? Weird. Anyhow I just got a longer usb cable and connected to my Win10 pc and it works from there. Got the muriatic acid and hydrogen peroxide etc so I am almost there. I figure that will be a good choice for the etchant at least for my first attempts as it can be saved and reused. I am going to try the no-iron version and see if I can get the design to transfer because if it really works, that would be a cool way to get it done. If not, I'll buy an iron or use my wife's. I also have a t-shirt press that would likely work but sucks a lot of juice to warm it up. I also ordered some carbide drill bits but they are coming from overseas. Any tips or advice?

We definitely are comparing apples to oranges here. I am not looking to make anything with more that 100 pins. My hobby interest level is not in all of the whizbang full features of autorouting. When I declared I definitely liked Diptrace better than EAGLE or KiCAD I was having a VERY biased opinion of the BEGINNER documentation walk through and the simplicity of the user interface. As a CAD PCB newbie I found the learning curve to start from scratch knowing nothing about EAGLE was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay above my skill set as an amateur electronics dabbler. The EAGLE GUI and documentation was hard for me to read...even when greatly magnified. And then 5 minutes into waltzing with DIPtrace tutorials pretty much sold me.... just enough to give it another looksie.

I installed gEDA on LINUX MINT and ran it and got a schematic work bench. What documentation is there for stone cold beginners with this ? I'm getting nothing from help button links.

THANK YOU HARVEY!!!.......ALL VERY IMPORTANT AND NOTE WORTHY but we are talking here on HOME BREW PCBs forum and sometimes we really are home brewing PCBs and not investing in expensive professional tooling. I have been hand drilling at low speeds...dead batteries.... using DREMEL pumpkin cutters: http://www.learnmorsecode.com/DC/x9a.jpg for 4 years. ANYone can do this for home brewing PCBs in their kitchen. http://www.learnmorsecode.com/D718/DJ1.jpg http://www.learnmorsecode.com/pic/886x01.jpg http://www.learnmorsecode.com/pic/pin2.jpg http://www.learnmorsecode.com/laminator/pic/dremel60AWG.jpg http://www.learnmorsecode.com/laminator/pic/lcdexp00.jpg http://www.learnmorsecode.com/laminator/pic/lcdexp01.jpg and easily plunge accurate holes that will hold 28 pin DIP chips. I do not use 5 different drill bits.... like for tiny 1/8th watt resistors and bigger transistors. I drill just one size hole and when I need a bigger hole I go back and give a angled twist and grind a bigger hole. I have broken some drill bits and have learned that if I design my PCB to have a PLUS sign or round hole then the drill bit finds center and doesn't argue much and doesn't break. This particular HARBOR FREIGHT rotary tool was note worthy to share because it is definitely half the price of the dremel pumpkin cutter and plugs into the wall. Which means top speed will be attained every time.... compared to dead batteries in my dremel tools. Now about wobble ......... I have drilled at least 1,000 holes in 4 years with my dremel pumpkin cutter and only recently have noticed wear and tear and wobble. http://www.learnmorsecode.com/regen/03batch1.jpg That is one reason I bought another toy from harbor freight. If this toy lasts a year before wobbling I got my $9 out of it. And YES black carbide drill bits are fragile and do shatter. ALWAYS wear eye protection when spinning any cutting tool. Sometimes I wear a ski mask that has a built in condensation clearing fan when I grind and cut 1/2 inch steel threaded rods with dremel cutoff wheels. I buy my drill bits in packs of 100 or more and right now I have enough to last until I die so I don't care if I break THE ONE BIT I will use that came with the rotary tool. Have fun. I am. Rob

PCB holes drill from HARBOR FREIGHT $9 the tool: DRILMASTER #63235 ROTARY TOOL KIT comes with all sorts of grinder and polishing tips and the ONE drill bit I use to drill PCB component holes. The ONLY reason I bought it was to drill PCB holes. and I was LEARY. Because I have another one that looks just like it but the voltage is 9volts on mine and will not drill clear through a PCB. THIS ONE IS 12 VOLTS so the acid test was to punch some holes in PCB AND IT WORKED GREAT!!!!!! So..... no more battery operated DREMEL pumpkin cutters for me. http://www.learnmorsecode.com/gerber/pcbdrill.jpg