The Eagle file is exported into Illustrator and the only thing Rik and myself needed to include the drillholes. Geert Langereis came with a great solution and the procedure was done in 5 minutes! Next we got on the bike to the guys of Easy Laser. One we got there, we left our files and there were some test runs to see how deep the laser needed to 'print' our files. Besides this, we discussed how to cut the PCB into a nice round shape, how we could etch the print and how to drill the holes fast. After a discussion in Vertigo, we got sent to the GTD, they are specialized in electronics and much more. We arranged a drill in which we could drill the 2500 holes ourselves. This would probably even be faster than drilling the holes in a machine. As a last, we visited Brigatti to buy buy sodium as an etching substance and retrieved the PCB from Easy Laser. The result be on the blog as soon as I have received the pictures.
02-11
This morning we had planned to etch and we did (only it also took us the afternoon:P), Rik arranged a 'zuurkast' and a bowl to etch the PCB, which was great, as we did not have to worry about toxins. The guys there were very helpful and helped us out a lot. At first, the sodium solution did not bite of the copper at all. Then one of the scientists proposed to use fuming nitric acid. At the moment we put it on there, we found out that there was a layer on the copper, which is why the sodium was not able to react. We polished the entire pcb with nitric acid until we saw the 'real' copper, which was much shinier than the copper before. After half an hour in the sodium solution, we had a 'bare PCB'. We polished the left-overs of with nitric acid. When we washed of the paint with thinner, we saw that a lot of tracks had been broken by the nitric acid, which means that the PCB is 'broken'. This was a big bummer... What we do next depends on the damage of the tracks, which we will also discuss with Geert Langereis
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