Remember the past

[RobN]

Can’t forget the good old days of making your own PCB with a laser printer and an iron ( yes I know you all still probably use this method). I’m going back in the past and my son and I are building a old ETI 651 BFO from scratch. He was wanting to build one from a kit as I have but since he is just getting into it I wanted to do it from scratch. Unfortunately the old plans are pretty rough probably from over coping, but I managed to make a descent board. (Wasn’t easy). And I drilled the holes out free hand with a drimmel drill so my holes where pretty uneven but I managed to get the 14 pin sockets in place for the IC but haven’t solder them in yet.
I personally have built several PI kits from silver dog on a premade board. But this is my first made from scratch MT. And I wanted to share it with my son.
Sorry I know it’s old school stuff but I think it is important to start from the beginning and never forget where it all started. Sorry if you think it’s boring (as my son does LOL).

[RobN]

Any helpful hints would be great and teach another teenager to continue on with the old and hopefully the new and possible advance into a new Era of metal detecting. Plus not to mention help that I may need. Thanks, RobN (and I need tons of help myself)!

[dbanner]

that's really great, what you are doing. If you have any flux paste, you could tin the board.
If the copper where the holes are meant to be didn't etch away, as is sometimes the case, I use a small nail and hammer(small) to punch an indent so the Drill bit doesn't drift around.

[dbanner]

This way I keep all ducks in a row

[dbanner]

I even made my own drill gizmo thing

[Skippy]

Using a Laser printer is old-fashioned? You youngsters. Old fashioned is drawing the tracks directly onto the copper with a Dalo etch-resist marker pen. And if you were flash and could afford them, you used rub-down transfers for difficult items like DIL IC packages.

Well equipped folk bought UV-light-sensitive coated copper-clad board, then used a 'negative' of the track layout and a UV light-box to cure the coating. Wash off the unexposed resist, then etch. You could buy the UV-sensitive resist in aerosol cans, if you only had plain copper-clad board.

And as pointed out, you need to buy/make a centre-punch. If you have a broken drill bit, it can be re-ground to a point. Alternatively, if you strip down junk like CD-ROM drives, cassette decks, VCR's, you will almost certainly find lengths of very hard steel rods for bearings, guides, linear sliders etc. With your finished tool, place the point in the correct spot on the PCB, give it a tap with a hammer, there's your small indentation for your twist-drill to start in.

[waltr]

Using a Laser printer is old-fashioned? You youngsters. Old fashioned is drawing the tracks directly onto the copper with a Dalo etch-resist marker pen. And if you were flash and could afford them, you used rub-down transfers for difficult items like DIL IC packages.

That is how I did PCBs back in the day. I still do this for a simple one-off PCB.

[kt315]

i ordered PCBs in China and specially wrote them a note that it is one sided board. got the batch... and was very surprising.
board two sided - all holes METALIZED!

[waltr]

i ordered PCBs in China and specially wrote them a note that it is one sided board. got the batch... and was very surprising.
board two sided - all holes METALIZED!

Nice. That does make for better soldering.

[Andi68]

[dbanner]

i ordered PCBs in China and specially wrote them a note that it is one sided board. got the batch... and was very surprising.
board two sided - all holes METALIZED!

Hmmm.

[tutanxamon32]

Can’t forget the good old days of making your own PCB with a laser printer and an iron ( yes I know you all still probably use this method). I’m going back in the past and my son and I are building a old ETI 651 BFO from scratch. He was wanting to build one from a kit as I have but since he is just getting into it I wanted to do it from scratch. Unfortunately the old plans are pretty rough probably from over coping, but I managed to make a descent board. (Wasn’t easy). And I drilled the holes out free hand with a drimmel drill so my holes where pretty uneven but I managed to get the 14 pin sockets in place for the IC but haven’t solder them in yet.
I personally have built several PI kits from silver dog on a premade board. But this is my first made from scratch MT. And I wanted to share it with my son.
Sorry I know it’s old school stuff but I think it is important to start from the beginning and never forget where it all started. Sorry if you think it’s boring (as my son does LOL).

very nice work Robn.

[RobN]

Thanks all, I have made small boards with a sharpie before but they was very minimum use boards. Built several kits with premade boards (PI’s) This was the first real board, if you want to call it that, mainly to teach my son and to try the set up out to make more complex boards. Hint- I found that HP presentation paper works very good for transferring the toner to the copper and I used muratic acid and peroxide (40% stuff) to etch. Only took about 2 minutes. Now if the thing works lol. What would be the pinouts to test with a oscilloscope to test if neeeded on the ETI651? Thanks for all the help and comments.