Etch a circuit board with kitchen supplies

When I was in third grade, back around 1959, they pulled me out of class and asked me if I would like to go to Mrs. Spencer&#x27;s Workshop for part of each day. This was a special class for bored and restless kids where we could work on projects of our own.<p>I started out drawing maps of freeway interchanges. A new freeway had just come through town (this was a very new thing at the time) and I was fascinated by the interchanges. I made sketches of all the ones between Eugene and Portland, and then I looked for something new to do.<p>I had been playing with electrical circuits for a while, so naturally I wanted to make a printed circuit board for a science fair project.<p>I didn&#x27;t have one of those fancy phenolic sheets with copper on one side, but I figured I could just use a sheet of copper and put electrical tape on both sides to act as resist for the traces, and then mount the whole thing on a wooden board when done.<p>It would be a circuit, on a board, etched like a real printed circuit. So I thought that counted as a printed circuit board.<p>I asked Mrs. Spencer if she could get me a copper sheet and some electrical tape, along with a tank of nitric acid. And she did!<p>I taped up the sheet, dunked it in the nitric acid, and watched the unprotected parts dissolve away. And then I pulled the remaining circuit out of the acid, rinsed it off, peeled off the tape, and mounted it on my board.<p>Of course we didn&#x27;t need eye protection or anything fancy like that back in those days.<p>And the circuit worked the first time! It may have been the first and last circuit or program where I had such good luck.<p>It was the most awesomest day at school ever!

This kind of stuff is cool from a educational perspective but with services like OSHPark I&#x27;ve lost motivation to make diy circuit boards. The batch services are just so cheap and fast now days.

When I around 12 years old I attempted to etch my first circuit board. I took my copper clad board, placed it in a pie tin and then proceeded to pour in the etching acid. Within seconds, the acid reacted violently with tin and dissolved through the bottom of the pan and spilled all over the table saw and garage floor where I was working. Let&#x27;s just say my dad was not a happy camper when I showed him my handiwork!

If you&#x27;re new to making circuit boards, I highly recommend giving KiCad a try, for drawing your schematic and board layout. It&#x27;s open source, and while there are some rough edges, it seems to be built on a good foundation and there&#x27;s been lots of good work being done on it lately. The learning curve isn&#x27;t too steep, as these things go, but you&#x27;re not likely to be limited it anytime soon, if ever.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kicad-pcb.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kicad-pcb.org&#x2F;</a>

The iron-on toner transfer thing has been around since laser printers came out. It doesn&#x27;t work very well. Note the mention of needing a few tries to get it right. &quot;Touch up&quot; with a conductive ink pen and X-acto knife is often required. The resolution of this process is not that good. There also tend to be registration problems, because laser printer roller feeds are not precision devices. If you&#x27;re doing modern surface mount components, it may not be good enough. There also tend to be registration problems, because laser printer roller feeds are not precision devices. You don&#x27;t get plated through holes. So through-board connections have to be made by soldering in little wires. There are special rivets and tools available for this.<p>Other than as a curiosity, or for very, very simple boards for large components, this is more trouble than it&#x27;s worth. Quick-turn one-off boards are so cheap now.

If you want to make your first PCB for the simplest of projects this is overkill.<p>Instead:<p>+ Get a single sided copper board and draw your design with a marker pen<p>+ Etch it in ferric chloride in a plastic takeaway tub<p>+ Drill holes<p>If it is too hard to draw with marker pen, then it is time to get the boards made for you from one of the links in this thread. The method in this article just looks frustrating.

The stuff you use for etching your own boards tend to be pretty nasty. Enough to burn holes in clothes and give you a rash if you&#x27;re careless. Like other said, it&#x27;s more economical to order boards through services like OSHPark and Seeed. If you want to make your own board for educational purposes or super quick turnaround (&lt;24 hours) I think you&#x27;re better off milling it. More of a hassle but much safer. Get a cheap CNC like a 3020 or something.

The PCB tutorials by Chuck Adams(K7QO) on YT are pretty good and go over a unique PCB style that he calls MUPPET. Zero thru-hole mounting, but uses thru-hole parts (and SMD sometimes). His tutorials also go over creating the print transfer using a small lamination machine rather than a hot clothes iron. I recommend checking out the series.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=O6AmT1trO60" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=O6AmT1trO60</a>

I totally understand the hobbiest aspect here, but... I just paid $15 for 3x 4-layer boards that will be delivered to me in a week. IDK, cool, but I’d spend more than $15 making 2-layer with way worse tolerances.

I still have one of the first circuit boards I made, sometime around 1982. I plugged my soldering iron into a Variac to run it at a lower temperature, then used it to draw with beeswax onto a piece of bare board, correcting my mistakes with a knife.<p>Today I just use a quick turn service, or some form of &quot;dead bug&quot; breadboarding.

Sticker backer paper is a good idea- I have also had good luck using shiny wrapping paper.

Ok, now let&#x27;s automate this!