> Can you tell me (us:) more about this plotter?  Where did you get it?
What
> kinds of pens did you get?  Where are you getting pens?  What
size/thickness
> copper clad boards are you using?  Have you attempted double sided?   How
> well does the ink stand up to etching?

Well, I'm borrowing the plotter from work.  It was gathering dust in the
basement.
It originally came from an architects office, but he went belly up...

The problem with this plotter is the wierd penns it uses, but the advantage
is there is no cover or blockage for higher penns.  This means that any pen
with the right width will fit as long as you do a little mod on it.
What I did was examine a original pen with a exact tool and found that I
needed penns with 9.5mm width and a 1mm thick ring at a certain point from
the tip.  This ring I made with the center copper conductor of normal 1mm PR
cable used for electrical outlets etc...  I made a little ring, pressed it
on the pen and heated the ring slightly with a soldering iron.  This caused
the ring to grip the pen at the rigth point.  Tadaa, I had a plotter pen.

As for the type of penns...
I have tried a tonn of them, and found a cd-pen to be quite good.  Then I
had a talk with Staetler and they offered to send me some of their newest
line so I could test.  I got word from customs the other day, so I get the
penns later today :-)  (Free!!!)
Then I'll test if they hold up better to the acid.  Turns out the CD-pen is
lousy at this, as it is eaten away at half the rate of the copper!  This
leaves the board very sensetive to uneven etching or over-etching for that
matter.
Nothing close to the results you get with a good photoresist...  But it's
getting better.
And, it's fast!

I will be putting up some pictures of the different penns and their
test-etches soon on my homepage.
I just need to get some other experiments out of the way first...  (Doing
some homemade heatpipes.)

    KreAture

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