If you enjoy building electronic projects and have fancied being able to create your own PCB boards a new open source DIY laser PCB printer in the form of the DiyouPCB has been created to do just that using a BluRay optical pickup.
The DiyouPCB laser PCB printer uses a complete BluRay optical pickup without the need for any modifications, the UV laser scans the PCB surface and sensitise the UV resistive dry film to create the custom PCB layouts.
The DiyouPCB open source PCB printer offers a 210mm x 170mm print area and has a print speed of 600mm a minute. The full device including case measures 385 mm x 345mm x 100mm and weighs around 2.6kg. Watch the video below to learn more and see the DiyouPCB in action. Its creators explain a little more about the design process:
“We used the famous Toshiba PHR-803T Blue Ray™ pick-up (really it’s HD-DVD). We though we could use a Blue Ray™ pickup laser diode to sensitize Dry-Film: a photoresist material very popular to print PCB’s. Dry-film is easy to use (adheres to the copper board through heat) and has a reasonable price ($15-$20 per m2). We have used it extensively with very good results.”
“The mechanics is an X/Y Cartesian table which moves the pickup with two Nema 16 stepper motors and T2.5 timing-belts. Most of the printer framework has been printed with a 3D Reprap printer, so itʼs replicable.
We also developed the Arduino UNO firmware, based on 3D printer firmware Marlin, and the server side software which send the HPGL commands to the printer. Eagle Cadsoft complete the “tool-chain”. It supports HPGL in his CAM processor, so is easy to design the circuit with Eagle, generate the HPGL file and send it to the printer.
DiyouPCB is a prototype and it’s still not perfect: we have some resonance and vibration issues that affect the quality of printing, but it’s a first step to have an alternative method to indirect methods as the famous toner transfer.”
If you fancy building your very own DiyouPCB open source laser PCB printer jump over to the creators website for full instructions and everything you will need for the project.
Source: Electronics Lab : Hack-a-Day : DiyouPCB
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