Silkscreen is in an Indian PCB factory video. Also you can CNC the resin off in the areas you want to use as pads and leave the copper. This is after then resin is cured over all of the PCB side. There is a video of someone doing that method. They CNC'ed both sides and did the holes. They then did the vias. There are two good ways of doing the vias. Then the tin bath to protect to copper. You can do this after the resin coating. This means just the pads are tinned. Second method: Silkscreen for the resin coating and then used toner on a transparent A4 sheet to block the UV light in the areas they didnt want cured. They printed the pattern twice and stacked both on top of each other. Then placed on top of the resin coating and applied the UV light.
I am sure there are many videos on UA-cam featuring various different methods for this, there are about 5 videos on the topic on my channel alone! Check them out if you are interested. Thanks for the comment.
@@ForOurGood I will watch all your videos. About to try and do this myself. I'm trying the CNC method. Using the silk screen to apply the ink and a laser printer to create a mask for the UV light. Via's will use rivets for double sided boards. After the uncured ink is removed from the pads. Then tinning liquid on the pads only. Just trying to avoid all the chemicals if I can. This is being tried at home. All your's and others videos are making this possible.
You should try making a mask and put emulsion on the silk screen so that you are only putting the white where you want it. This is how it is done for silk screen printing. You can get the emulsion as a dry film as well. If you had a vinyl cutter you can also make the screen with low temp heat transfer vinyl applied to the mesh. But another note for single sided pcb, you can get vinyl stick sheets for inkjet printers and print a sticker to apply to the backside. If you do get the clear vinyl go over the printed sticker once it has sat for 12 to 24 hrs.
@@ForOurGood I do like the idea of using mesh to apply the solder mask Given that I have plenty of extra mesh I think I will make up some small frames for pcb work.
@@eross21 The brand of the green UV resin is "WNB". You can find it on Ali-Express. It is shiny after removing the silkscreen, but after UV exposure it goes a little matt. I think it looks pretty good, better than shiny.
This is the best UA-cam channel for professional PCB making with high resolution in mind using best methods. Specially for using laser. You should try looking into laser scanning PCB UV sensitizing using laser printer polygon motor. An open source projected called “hexastorm” have able to achieve high resolution prints using a prism scanner head. There is also an open source project called “LDgraphy” which is much more easier to make and literally uses a laser printer polygon mirror motor. All that is needed to get high resolution PCB sensitizing is to use UV film and use a heat roller to pass it through the PCB few times. A modified card laminate heat roller can be used and boost it’s temperature when heat rolling the UV film. Another approach is to use PCB UV ink and have it sprayed on the PCB using a high pressure spray gun or have the PCB rotate at high speed and add few drops of UV ink to the PCB.
I think I cover it in the first episode, but the basic concept of this series is to challenge myself to make good PCB's with an off the shelf super cheap CNC. Actually I am also trying to keep any other processes as few and simple as possible, in this case we just have the UV resin application method and, the IKEA container with etchant.. and that's it. I am also very familiar with the UV photo resist method, in a prior career I must of made over 100 PCB's using this method for real world applications. Maybe a future series could look at improved ways to expose the UV photo resist for even higher resolution PCB's, but for now I am just having too much fun playing with this new CNC centric method I am working out. And to be honest, I usually found the UV photo method resist more stressful than it was ever fun, so there is that too ;-) Thanks again for taking the time to watch and comment!
@@ForOurGood Good to know you worked with UV photo resits professionally, that puts peace of mind now 😅lol. Would like to see your vast knowledge in UV photo resits implementations for high precision PCB sensitizing. No one make videos about them on UA-cam because it's highly complex and advanced. I agree with you, using a much simpler approach, newer ideas and methods for using cheaper chemicals, easily available chemicals and less preparation hassle to make quality PCBs is the way to go. Doing research in this manner can lead to new innovation which can be perfected for precision.
Thanks for the question! I have actually thought about it, but I have never tried it, as it would be extremely hard to cut the fine details I need using a vinyl sticker. Currently I am etching features as small as 0.1mm with spacing of 0.12mm using UV resin, my experience tells me that that would be impossible using a vinyl sticker. Thanks for all the comments and I am happy to hear you liked the videos, there will a new video out soon.
Thanks for the question! Yes, this UV seems to cope well with the typical temperature of solder. In my later videos, I did some rework, and there was no problem. Of course there is a limit to anything, too much temperature for too long, and it is going to start to break down.
I think you should try closer setup, laser and PCB when you try silkscreen In focus laser has 0.02mm dot, it's almost invisible But when you try closer you will have example 0.3dot It's big difference And you will not burnout PCB becasuse power off laser will be applied to parter area (0.3 mm) not 0.02mm
Thanks for the idea. I will try some different focus heights next time to see how that affects the dot size. I already made another PCB, and video should be out in a few days. So the test you suggested might make it into a following video. Thanks again!
I have tried exposing green solder mask with a 500mw 405nm laser (allegedly, it's Chinese after all) and it really doesn´t work well at all. It only cures reasonably if the speed is set to 1mm/s. Focus doesn´t seem to affect it too much. I think this is only acceptable for silkscreen text. It's probably better to just apply mask to the whole board and either print out a negative on a transparent film for exposure or use a laser to burn off the excess.
In EP8 in this series, I mostly succeed in exposing a detailed pattern using UV resin, but it's a bit blurry around the edges. Just yesterday I have restarted my experiments with this, and could further improve on that somewhat. The key is to go slow and low power, 100mm/min gave a nice result, but still furry around the edges. Going fast with high power does not work at all. Finally, it dawned on me yesterday, that it is likely the furry edges is related to the resin itself transmitting the light (I have experiences this with SLA printers too!), this is especially notable for small circles or intersecting lines where the seeping light gets double or more time to have its unwanted effect. My next experiment will use black resin, my expectation is that black resin should not transmit the light so well, and stop (or reduce) this unwanted fringe exposure. Should prove my theory right or wrong either way. Thanks for the comment!
@@ForOurGood I have had some success with it too. The key with the ¨Mechanic¨ resin is to heat it up first. Apparently there are some volatile components in there that interfere with the curing process. I heated up a small test board with a heatgun set at about 200 degrees C. I assume the board reached about 80 peak. After letting it cool down the resin reacted almost instantly to the laser. Also, something to keep in mind is that the PWM toggle of your laser module might switch the buck converter, not the laser itself. In my case this causes about 60ms delay between the laser being fully powered on or off due to the capacitor charging/discharging. This may cause unwanted effect as well. I had to use delay commands in my Gcode to compensate for this.
@@schetenwapper6591 Sorry, just found this comment in UA-cam quarantine.. dunno why. So heating it makes a big difference, really?!, I'll give it a go! What travel speed can you run at when it is heated compared to if it is cold? When I am burning the resin, I use travel speeds of up to 800mm/min and never seen any laser switching lag thankfully.
@@ForOurGood Funny I don´t think I said anything to trigger the quarantine. After some testing using a proper hotplate I've found that 80 degrees centigrade for 10 minutes works well. You can let it cool down afterwards but the preheating step is important. My travel speed is 2100 mm/min and one pass is enough to cure both white and green solder mask, with the 500mw laser at half power. Also the laser spot size I use for green solder mask is about 0.5mm by unfocusing while the white solder mask spot size is closer to 0.1mm. Not necessarily because white is harder to cure but because it's used as silkscreen instead.
I got this laser from the LaserTree official store on AliExpress (no affiliation). It is the gold "40W" laser with fixed 20mm focus. So far I have been really happy with this laser, but as it's my first laser I am not sure I should be making recommendations. Anyway, I usually list up materials I am using at the end of the series, so likely the next or next next episode assuming all goes well. Generally I don't do links. Thanks for taking the time to comment!
@@ForOurGood Thanks for your quick response. Don't understand much of the many types of lasers yet. The laserpecker pro seemed like a nice laser to me, but I can't find anything about the 20mm focus. This is a 405nm purple laser. Is that better or not if I may ask?
@@matheokoning4456 I am really sorry, but I just don't know much myself as I am still a laser newbie myself. From what I have learnt is that the fixed focal length lasers are probably the better choice (assumes you can easily adjust the height). My research also showed me that 40W diode lasers (apparently optical power is only 5W) seems powerful enough for most needs. Of course these cheap lasers will never be as powerful as a CO2 laser, but for me, it's proven good enough for what I need. You may also want to check the rated lifetime of the laser diode, I noticed some big variation in that regard.
@@ForOurGood No problem. I'll look into it a bit more myself. Is it an idea to mount the laser as an extra fixed on the CNC so that you only have to set an ofset once? That way you could make PCBs even faster.
@@matheokoning4456 I probe the laser height for every operation where the board has been removed from the mount. I do this to ensure a consistent focus and therefore beam width. I don't think it is a good idea to avoid this step. I do however see some people mount the laser on the left side of the motor mount. This definately would save some time when switching between laser and mill. My PCB process only requires 2 changes, so it is not so bad, and I also worry the side mount might affect accuracy. Anyway for now I will leave it be.
@@المخترععودةالكاطع sorry, small correction. I thought you were talking about the UV laser where protection glasses are a must. If your UV light has its own UV light shield, then you don't really need glasses. If you have an open UV light, and you use it a lot, then using UV protection glasses would be a good idea. Generally I don't use UV glasses during the UV curing process, as my lights are shielded.
@@jaggerneill1404 Check my newest video for more insights. There is never a "final" solution of course. I will continually try to find ways to improve my methods, or even try totally different methods. Thanks for the comment!
You are a Godsend!!! that PCBlooks Beautiful!
Silkscreen is in an Indian PCB factory video. Also you can CNC the resin off in the areas you want to use as pads and leave the copper. This is after then resin is cured over all of the PCB side. There is a video of someone doing that method.
They CNC'ed both sides and did the holes. They then did the vias. There are two good ways of doing the vias. Then the tin bath to protect to copper. You can do this after the resin coating. This means just the pads are tinned.
Second method: Silkscreen for the resin coating and then used toner on a transparent A4 sheet to block the UV light in the areas they didnt want cured. They printed the pattern twice and stacked both on top of each other. Then placed on top of the resin coating and applied the UV light.
I am sure there are many videos on UA-cam featuring various different methods for this, there are about 5 videos on the topic on my channel alone! Check them out if you are interested.
Thanks for the comment.
@@ForOurGood I will watch all your videos. About to try and do this myself. I'm trying the CNC method. Using the silk screen to apply the ink and a laser printer to create a mask for the UV light. Via's will use rivets for double sided boards. After the uncured ink is removed from the pads. Then tinning liquid on the pads only.
Just trying to avoid all the chemicals if I can. This is being tried at home. All your's and others videos are making this possible.
@@GodKitty677 Good luck!
You should try making a mask and put emulsion on the silk screen so that you are only putting the white where you want it. This is how it is done for silk screen printing. You can get the emulsion as a dry film as well. If you had a vinyl cutter you can also make the screen with low temp heat transfer vinyl applied to the mesh. But another note for single sided pcb, you can get vinyl stick sheets for inkjet printers and print a sticker to apply to the backside. If you do get the clear vinyl go over the printed sticker once it has sat for 12 to 24 hrs.
All food for thought! Thanks so much for taking the time to comment!
@@ForOurGood I do like the idea of using mesh to apply the solder mask Given that I have plenty of extra mesh I think I will make up some small frames for pcb work.
that green solder mask at the end ? what brand is that? and did it come out that shiny after removing the screen?
@@eross21 The brand of the green UV resin is "WNB". You can find it on Ali-Express. It is shiny after removing the silkscreen, but after UV exposure it goes a little matt. I think it looks pretty good, better than shiny.
This is the best UA-cam channel for professional PCB making with high resolution in mind using best methods. Specially for using laser. You should try looking into laser scanning PCB UV sensitizing using laser printer polygon motor. An open source projected called “hexastorm” have able to achieve high resolution prints using a prism scanner head. There is also an open source project called “LDgraphy” which is much more easier to make and literally uses a laser printer polygon mirror motor. All that is needed to get high resolution PCB sensitizing is to use UV film and use a heat roller to pass it through the PCB few times. A modified card laminate heat roller can be used and boost it’s temperature when heat rolling the UV film. Another approach is to use PCB UV ink and have it sprayed on the PCB using a high pressure spray gun or have the PCB rotate at high speed and add few drops of UV ink to the PCB.
I think I cover it in the first episode, but the basic concept of this series is to challenge myself to make good PCB's with an off the shelf super cheap CNC. Actually I am also trying to keep any other processes as few and simple as possible, in this case we just have the UV resin application method and, the IKEA container with etchant.. and that's it.
I am also very familiar with the UV photo resist method, in a prior career I must of made over 100 PCB's using this method for real world applications.
Maybe a future series could look at improved ways to expose the UV photo resist for even higher resolution PCB's, but for now I am just having too much fun playing with this new CNC centric method I am working out. And to be honest, I usually found the UV photo method resist more stressful than it was ever fun, so there is that too ;-)
Thanks again for taking the time to watch and comment!
@@ForOurGood Good to know you worked with UV photo resits professionally, that puts peace of mind now 😅lol. Would like to see your vast knowledge in UV photo resits implementations for high precision PCB sensitizing. No one make videos about them on UA-cam because it's highly complex and advanced.
I agree with you, using a much simpler approach, newer ideas and methods for using cheaper chemicals, easily available chemicals and less preparation hassle to make quality PCBs is the way to go. Doing research in this manner can lead to new innovation which can be perfected for precision.
Have you ever tried instead of couting the board with resin use a venyl sticker
Thanks for the question!
I have actually thought about it, but I have never tried it, as it would be extremely hard to cut the fine details I need using a vinyl sticker.
Currently I am etching features as small as 0.1mm with spacing of 0.12mm using UV resin, my experience tells me that that would be impossible using a vinyl sticker.
Thanks for all the comments and I am happy to hear you liked the videos, there will a new video out soon.
Do the UV resin resist to the temperature of solder?
Great vídeo by the way
Thanks for the question! Yes, this UV seems to cope well with the typical temperature of solder. In my later videos, I did some rework, and there was no problem. Of course there is a limit to anything, too much temperature for too long, and it is going to start to break down.
@@ForOurGood Thanks for the quick answer. I will try this tecnique. You got a new follower. Greatings from Brazil.
@@somostodospereira Suprisingly I have allot of viewers from Brazil. Thanks for subscribing 👍
I think you should try closer setup, laser and PCB when you try silkscreen
In focus laser has 0.02mm dot, it's almost invisible
But when you try closer you will have example 0.3dot
It's big difference
And you will not burnout PCB becasuse power off laser will be applied to parter area (0.3 mm) not 0.02mm
Thanks for the idea. I will try some different focus heights next time to see how that affects the dot size. I already made another PCB, and video should be out in a few days. So the test you suggested might make it into a following video. Thanks again!
I have tried exposing green solder mask with a 500mw 405nm laser (allegedly, it's Chinese after all) and it really doesn´t work well at all. It only cures reasonably if the speed is set to 1mm/s. Focus doesn´t seem to affect it too much. I think this is only acceptable for silkscreen text.
It's probably better to just apply mask to the whole board and either print out a negative on a transparent film for exposure or use a laser to burn off the excess.
In EP8 in this series, I mostly succeed in exposing a detailed pattern using UV resin, but it's a bit blurry around the edges. Just yesterday I have restarted my experiments with this, and could further improve on that somewhat. The key is to go slow and low power, 100mm/min gave a nice result, but still furry around the edges. Going fast with high power does not work at all. Finally, it dawned on me yesterday, that it is likely the furry edges is related to the resin itself transmitting the light (I have experiences this with SLA printers too!), this is especially notable for small circles or intersecting lines where the seeping light gets double or more time to have its unwanted effect. My next experiment will use black resin, my expectation is that black resin should not transmit the light so well, and stop (or reduce) this unwanted fringe exposure. Should prove my theory right or wrong either way. Thanks for the comment!
@@ForOurGood
I have had some success with it too. The key with the ¨Mechanic¨ resin is to heat it up first. Apparently there are some volatile components in there that interfere with the curing process. I heated up a small test board with a heatgun set at about 200 degrees C. I assume the board reached about 80 peak. After letting it cool down the resin reacted almost instantly to the laser.
Also, something to keep in mind is that the PWM toggle of your laser module might switch the buck converter, not the laser itself. In my case this causes about 60ms delay between the laser being fully powered on or off due to the capacitor charging/discharging. This may cause unwanted effect as well. I had to use delay commands in my Gcode to compensate for this.
@@schetenwapper6591 Sorry, just found this comment in UA-cam quarantine.. dunno why.
So heating it makes a big difference, really?!, I'll give it a go! What travel speed can you run at when it is heated compared to if it is cold? When I am burning the resin, I use travel speeds of up to 800mm/min and never seen any laser switching lag thankfully.
@@ForOurGood Funny I don´t think I said anything to trigger the quarantine.
After some testing using a proper hotplate I've found that 80 degrees centigrade for 10 minutes works well. You can let it cool down afterwards but the preheating step is important.
My travel speed is 2100 mm/min and one pass is enough to cure both white and green solder mask, with the 500mw laser at half power.
Also the laser spot size I use for green solder mask is about 0.5mm by unfocusing while the white solder mask spot size is closer to 0.1mm. Not necessarily because white is harder to cure but because it's used as silkscreen instead.
@@schetenwapper6591 thanks for the detailed info!
May I ask which laser you use and/or recommend?
And maybe it's useful to mention in the description which materials you use with links
I got this laser from the LaserTree official store on AliExpress (no affiliation). It is the gold "40W" laser with fixed 20mm focus. So far I have been really happy with this laser, but as it's my first laser I am not sure I should be making recommendations. Anyway, I usually list up materials I am using at the end of the series, so likely the next or next next episode assuming all goes well. Generally I don't do links. Thanks for taking the time to comment!
@@ForOurGood Thanks for your quick response. Don't understand much of the many types of lasers yet. The laserpecker pro seemed like a nice laser to me, but I can't find anything about the 20mm focus. This is a 405nm purple laser. Is that better or not if I may ask?
@@matheokoning4456 I am really sorry, but I just don't know much myself as I am still a laser newbie myself. From what I have learnt is that the fixed focal length lasers are probably the better choice (assumes you can easily adjust the height). My research also showed me that 40W diode lasers (apparently optical power is only 5W) seems powerful enough for most needs. Of course these cheap lasers will never be as powerful as a CO2 laser, but for me, it's proven good enough for what I need. You may also want to check the rated lifetime of the laser diode, I noticed some big variation in that regard.
@@ForOurGood No problem. I'll look into it a bit more myself. Is it an idea to mount the laser as an extra fixed on the CNC so that you only have to set an ofset once? That way you could make PCBs even faster.
@@matheokoning4456 I probe the laser height for every operation where the board has been removed from the mount. I do this to ensure a consistent focus and therefore beam width. I don't think it is a good idea to avoid this step. I do however see some people mount the laser on the left side of the motor mount. This definately would save some time when switching between laser and mill. My PCB process only requires 2 changes, so it is not so bad, and I also worry the side mount might affect accuracy. Anyway for now I will leave it be.
Will need eye protect glasses of uv light
@@المخترععودةالكاطع Yes, you will need!
@@المخترععودةالكاطع sorry, small correction. I thought you were talking about the UV laser where protection glasses are a must. If your UV light has its own UV light shield, then you don't really need glasses. If you have an open UV light, and you use it a lot, then using UV protection glasses would be a good idea. Generally I don't use UV glasses during the UV curing process, as my lights are shielded.
@@ForOurGood
Thank for your answer
Waiting for the ultimate solution to your problem or the final solution?
@@jaggerneill1404 Check my newest video for more insights.
There is never a "final" solution of course. I will continually try to find ways to improve my methods, or even try totally different methods.
Thanks for the comment!
Interesting, what size mesh are you using to apply resin
I believe it is 150 mesh. I show the package in the video if you want to see the other details. Thanks for the question!
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You take way too long explaining this.
Glad you liked it, thanks!