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beginning of my third plasma speaker.

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GhostlyFigures

Wed Mar 17 2010, 04:01AM

Registered Member #2385 Joined: Thu Sept 24 2009, 01:26AM
Location: Waxhaw, North Carolina (Or Charlotte near UNCC)
Posts: 26

So this time instead of using a predrilled pcb I decided to make my own design using eagle and then etch a copper clad, I first tried the laser printer method but for some reason it wasn't working very well. The ink never fully transfered to the board so I washed it all the way and tried something different. I used an industrial sharpie which can be bought at a hardware store. Below are some of the pics after I etched the board and began to solder the parts on.

note that the long solder points are areas were the etch got through the sharpie since the board was so large and took some time to etch.

GhostlyFigures

Wed Mar 17 2010, 04:08AM

Registered Member #2385 Joined: Thu Sept 24 2009, 01:26AM
Location: Waxhaw, North Carolina (Or Charlotte near UNCC)
Posts: 26

heres the design credited to Tobias! Not exactly like his since i had to make mine fit a 3x5 space using the trial version of Eagle

tobias

Wed Mar 17 2010, 02:42PM

Registered Member #1956 Joined: Wed Feb 04 2009, 01:22PM
Location: Jersey City
Posts: 172

Industrial sharpie is like a pen? That's what I found on google... So you DRAW the circuit on the board? If you did so, congratulations!!! I never tried it before but I can only imaging how time consuming it should be!

I starting etching my own boards last year and I did not have any problems. So far so good. A few hints:
- Buy some glossy paper. The same that is used in expensive magazines!
- Configure your laser printer for "dark", disabling any economic mode
- The copper should be brilliant clear! I use scotch bright without water or anything else. And dont touch it after cleaning
- To make the transfer take an Iron. Choose the temperature just after "acrylic", little bellow "jeans/cotton". The paper does not have to turn yellow, if it's doing so the temperature its too high. Disable the water vapor!!!
- While the irol is getting hot you have to fix the paper on the board.
- After hot, press the iron over the paper, moving slowly, fr about 2 minutes.
- Take the hot board and give it a cold water bath!

The paper will go off easy, all the ink will stay in the board. Sometimes even the paper! You will have to stretch it out.

Were you following all those steps?
By the way the traces appear to be very good on the pictures

GhostlyFigures

Wed Mar 17 2010, 03:15PM

Registered Member #2385 Joined: Thu Sept 24 2009, 01:26AM
Location: Waxhaw, North Carolina (Or Charlotte near UNCC)
Posts: 26

yeah thanks!, I have used that method exept for the magazine paper - I went to staples because all the laser printers here at school are horrible and need replacement rollers. I thought staples would have glossy photo paper but it turned out to be some kinda glossy card stock which didn't work to well and before using that i used glossy presentation paper which worked a little better but still left most of the ink on the paper. So i guess next time i'll try using the magazine paper you mentioned! The low voltage side was the worst when i tried transferring the ink, in fact some of that side i didn't wash away and kept it there as an outline so i could do the sharpie method. Still most of the ink was gone and I did have a heck of time using the sharpie pen lol, but it worked! Also those long solder points are from where the sharpie wore away because it took to long to etch the other side of the board since it was still mostly copper. In order to save some other spots I actually took the board out of the etch and dried it then redrew some trouble spots with the sharpie lol, just be careful if you ever try that, the sharpie will actually remove its self if you don't let it dry a little. The sharpie method may turn out to be a desperate measure, so I wouldn't really recommend it but it does work surprisingly well.

GhostlyFigures

Tue Mar 30 2010, 06:47PM

Registered Member #2385 Joined: Thu Sept 24 2009, 01:26AM
Location: Waxhaw, North Carolina (Or Charlotte near UNCC)
Posts: 26

Alrighty, with everything on the board I decided to test the output frequency of the TL494CN and here's an image from my laptop oscilloscope. (the laptop oscilloscope isn't very accurate but it does its job

) There appears to be some noise on the rise and fall but when using one of the Lab oscilloscope at School I didn't see much of that at all and the wave was more square, I suppose there's some error involved in using a home-put together 100$ USB oscilloscope

1269974333 2385 FT85819 Oscilloscope Image Plasma Driver Output

cjk2

Tue Mar 30 2010, 10:17PM

Registered Member #51 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:17AM
Location:
Posts: 263

The trick to do a good toner transfer is the keep everything really clean right up to the actual transfer (don't touch the paper, keep the board clean with acetone. Then align the paper on the board and really lay into it with the iron to get a good transfer (Full heat, as much pressure as you can apply for maybe 10 minutes).

This has worked for me at least. The cheapest glossy photo paper staples sells should work well, you want a paper that is glossy, but breaks up easily in water. soak the board well after you have stuck the paper and toner to it, then very gently remove the paper layer by layer.

Then etch with hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide.

This method has worked pretty well for me in the past.

Turkey9

Tue Mar 30 2010, 11:13PM

Registered Member #1451 Joined: Wed Apr 23 2008, 03:48AM
Location: Boulder, Co
Posts: 661

also it seems the older printers work better as they don't skimp on the toner.

Hon1nbo

Wed Mar 31 2010, 02:59AM

Registered Member #902 Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: Pacific Northwest USA
Posts: 1042

when I used to get the Radio Shack PCB kits (and they do still sell those, with etchant and boards) it came with a Sharpie (just an ordinary sharpie) to mask the board, and it worked wonders!

-Jimmy

Mattski

Wed Mar 31 2010, 06:03AM

Registered Member #1792 Joined: Fri Oct 31 2008, 08:12PM
Location: University of California
Posts: 527

The few times I used sharpies I had problems when I changed the pen direction, or had a large area to cover. I'd get a bit of the board that wasn't really covered in ink. By letting it dry and then gently going over the area again I got better results. The newer the sharpie the better.

It works in a pinch and is not too bad for small boards.

I wonder, if you rough up the board a bit with sandpaper, maybe you could use a fountain pen to make traces. If it works you could use different width nibs to get different trace widths. Then for large copper areas, you could pain the ink on with a small brush to save time.

GhostlyFigures

Wed Apr 07 2010, 02:34AM

Registered Member #2385 Joined: Thu Sept 24 2009, 01:26AM
Location: Waxhaw, North Carolina (Or Charlotte near UNCC)
Posts: 26

I finally got around to testing the plasma speaker and it worked, then I turned it off for a bit. when I went back to test it further the power supply LED started to blink and nothing was working - Im guessing that its drawing to much amps to get started :( I have two power supplies, 1 12V 5A supply hooked up to the IC low voltage side and a 24V 3A power supply (looks like a laptop supply brick) hooked up to the high voltage side. What power supply should I be using? I have several SLA batteries but Im afraid I'll blow something up since it can just draw whatever amount of amps it wants from the batteries.

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