Wasn't there a company selling copper on 1-mil plastic, designed to be
printed on and then glued / epoxied onto a substrate? I remember reading
about it in Popular Electronics ages ago... You'd run this stuff through
a laser printer, align both sides of the board (the author used .100"
perfboard as a substrate, and did everything on .100" centres), contact
cement it down, and etch. Clean toner, and you're done.

I think this was the stuff: http://www.cpfindusprod.com/candl/zflex.html

-Randy Glenn
Comp. Eng. & Mgt. II, McMaster University
Treasurer, McMaster IEEE Student Branch
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-----Original Message-----
From: pic microcontroller discussion list
[mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU] On Behalf Of William Chops Westfield
Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 6:33 PM
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: [PICLIST] [EE]: Printer to PCB?


    OK, what I'd like to see is a system using laser to heat/melt copper
    powder so that it sticks to a bare fiberglass board.
        :
    Whaddya think ?

I think molten copper doesn't stick to fiberglass. :-) It probably burns
the fiberglass, emitting all sorts of nasty burning epoxy fumes, but I'm
pretty sure it doesn't stick.  Real PCB material is essentially made by
GLUING copper foil to fiberglass.

I think...  Modern low power circuits ought to be implementable using
carbon-based inks for traces and carbon-containing glue instead of
solder. I think someone ought to play with THAT a bit...

BillW

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