16 December 2009

Yusynth (Part 14)

Today I visited my old employer Bird Electronics again today to make some more Yusynth PCBs. In the picture you see my former colleague Marcel who did the nasty chemical bits. He put on his special clothes for this, because when you spill the etch material on your clothes the holes will eventually fall in. We made a lot of PCBs together. He helped me with my stuff, but we also created some PCB's for one of their customers. It was great fun to be there again and catch stories up a bit. I think the last time I was there was about a year ago.

My job today was to operate the UV light. The PCB layout is printed on transparent foil that is put on top of the PCB material. That in its turn has a photosensitive layer. So where there is ink on the PCB material the light gets blocked. Later on the unlighted parts will remain in copper while the rest will be etched away. Just leaving the copper lanes. He you see a case with left over PCB material. I can shop for my PCBs from there. All good stuff but only small pieces and big enough for the Yusynth PCBs.

And here are some finished PCBs drying. Next step is to drill the holes in them. I will return there on Monday to start working on that. I guess that will be a days work. I doubted recently by the way to try and make PCBs at home. You can buy all the needed kit online. But after today I'm happy that I didn't. First of all it is always a pleasure to visit Bird Electronics and secondly I wouldn't want these chemicals in my garage with the kids also walking in there and the cars being inside. So that idea is out of my head for good. I'll try to make some pictures on Monday as well.

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