Laser Engraving PCBs Part 1

For years the go-to method of home PCB production has been either UV exposing a design or "toner transfer" - printing the design on paper then transferring to the PCB. The problem is you can often get incomplete or smeared designs. Who has time for that?

But I have lasers. Can't I use those?

According to folks on the internet (who would never lie, right?) you can, so let's put it to the test.

First I sprayed the blank PCB with black primer. This is games workshop spray paint. I figured it was meant to work on metal (pewter) so why not copper?

The first attempt (at the bottom of this image) turned out bad due to the bad image I downloaded from the repo. It's a PNG that appears to have JPG artifacts, plus some weird lines.

Next I forgot to make the image a negative.

Top seems to have turned out great, let's let it finish engraving ...

Yup, that looks right ...

Closer inspection, some of those traces look fragile but they are all there.

Everything black will be protected from the chemical etching, anything copper will be etched away leaving the bare PCB plate.

Size looks spot on. The parallel port will go into these pins.

Next up is chemicals!