Welcome to my guide on how to make printed circuit boards using Ultraviolet (UV) Etch Film. If you’re looking to make your own printed circuit boards at home, using readily available chemicals and equipment, you’ve come to the right place!
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Why make your own printed circuit boards?
If you’re an electronics hobbyist, if you work with Arduino or Raspberry Pi, if you’re an amateur radio operator… or something of the sort, you might have come to the point where you want to build something, but there’s just no ready-made solution for it. You might want a circuit for which there’s no Arduino shield, or you might want something bigger than what an Arduino shield can provide. Or you might have found a schematic online that you want to make, but your regular old perforated copper boards just won’t do it… it’s just too complicated a circuit.
It’s in cases like this where you have to resort to making your own printed circuit boards, possibly making the PCBs at home. You go down to your electronics store, get a sheet of copper clad PCB material, design your circuit, and put it on the board. Easier said than done, of course.
I’ve done quite a few custom printed circuit boards in the years I’ve been playing around with Arduinos. Light arrays, sensors, interactive displays… and they all turn out better if you make a custom PCB and circuit design. Especially when people start asking you if you can build one for them. With what shields and arduino boards cost, if you do an Arduino-board based design, your final product can easily go to $50 or more. Do it on a custom board, optimized for components and space, with locally sourced parts, you could take that down to half.
Why make PCBs with ultraviolet film?
I started out like most people, using the toner-transfer method for my printed circuit boards. It worked nice, but was really inconsistent. Some boards would turn out good, others would not turn out. Sourcing the right kind of paper for toner transfer, getting the circuit on there, and then transferring everything to the copper board, it’s a process where lots of things can go wrong and your PCB can get wrecked. I tried to think of ways to make the process better and more reliable, but in the end I figured that getting the toner transfer PCB method to be reliable and consistent, required more investment in equipment than I was willing to make.
The one day, I decided to try out ultraviolet (UV) film for etching printed circuit boards. I went on Ebay, bought a couple sheets, and spent the better part of a month figuring out what chemicals I needed to source and where I could source them locally. I tried making a few PCBs with the UV light method, and was forever sold. No more toner transfer for me. UV requires a lot less equipment, is way more consistent than toner transfer, and can be done on a small or a large scale.
And now, a couple of years later, I’m putting all I know about how to make PCBs with ultraviolet film on this site, for everyone who might be interested in the topic. I hope this guide will make your learning curve a bit easier than mine was!