At 03:39 PM 12/22/2010, IVP wrote: >Oli, one of my Things To Do in the New Year is to try and find a >local supplier for Riston film and see if it's possible to make my own >photo-resist board. Keep in mind that laminating the film to the PCB stock takes some=20 work unless you have specialized laminating equipment. We have a much-modified GBC laminator that uses heated rollers. It=20 was purchased from one of the PCB manufacturing equipment suppliers=20 (don't recall just who right now) who apparently purchased these=20 laminators from GBC by the truck-load, did their modifications, then=20 sold them at highly inflated prices. GBC, by the way, is General=20 Binding Corporation. We were lucky enough to purchase ours from one of the local technical=20 universities who were upgrading. It uses 12" wide film rolls and a=20 13" wide paper carrier for laminating single-sided boards or two 12"=20 wide film rolls for laminating double-sided boards. We had a multi-step cleaning process that we put the raw board=20 through before applying the laminate. Omit any of the cleaning=20 steps: reliability went down. Do all of the steps: the photo=20 exposure gauge that we used said that we were getting something like=20 6 micron resolution on the copper. Every time. Yeah - Riston film really is that good. Drilling the boards was done on a home-made contraption that used two=20 stepper motors on a slanted MDF board setup in an arrangement that=20 was derived from old-style drafting machines that a draftsman would=20 use. Both motors turn one direction: the board goes up and=20 down. Both motors turn in opposite directions: the board goes left=20 and right. The drill head was stationary and just moved up and down=20 at the appropriate times. It was fairly slow - perhaps one hole every 2 or 3 seconds. But it=20 was able to operate unattended except for bit changes and therefore=20 quite reasonable for the time. I can't take any credit for the drilling machine - it was built by=20 Gordon Robineau from somewhere in the USA. I found out about it in=20 one of Don Lancaster's articles and purchased it directly from=20 Gordon. Gordon was also nice enough to release all of the=20 documentation, including all mechanical drawings and source code for=20 the software. Its been on my 'round-to-it' list to get this stuff up=20 on a website sometime. dwayne --=20 Dwayne Reid Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA (780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax www.trinity-electronics.com Custom Electronics Design and Manufacturing --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .