Make plastic printed circuits with a standard laser cutter [video]

What&#x27;s even more interesting is that this is pretty accessible. Given fairly common equipment, at least in a hackerspace, you can make ~8 mil traces on plastic or FR4. Not only that, but you can make them in 3D and with plated vias.<p>This dude has some absolutely jaw dropping (sputtering, scanning electron microscope, waterjet etc) videos on his channel; it&#x27;s definitely worth checking out the rest of his back catalogue.

I&#x27;m jealous of people who have such an elaborate workspace with so many toys and access to reagents. Still, it&#x27;s super interesting to see all the engineering challenges that go into taking something from &quot;works&quot; into &quot;work reliably&quot;

<i>&gt; [16:45] And when I was getting up to about, you know... test number 66 or whatever here, it all started to fall into place...</i><p>Quotes that let you know you&#x27;re doing <i>real</i> home science.

One of the advantages of the way FR4 PCBs for example are made is the following: 1) you can deposit a thin layer using an electroless process 2) then now that you have a continuous conducting surface you can electoplate to make a thick layer of copper that is quite strong and durable<p>Anyway, it would seem like with all this work he could have used the laser to define a photomask on copper clad board with some photosensitive material there, then just watch in the iron chloride solution as people have been doing for ages?<p>2 layer PCBs are really cheap these days and you don’t end up with vats of chemicals left over..<p>Anyway cool stuff, I’ve tried to do similar stuff and has always just found that paying $50 for a few PCBs is actually much more economical than this type of setup.

Ingenious method!