[jlnading]

Anyone here ever copper plated fiberglass for making good quality PCB's before? If so could your/the process be shared as I would like to make my own, thanks Jeff.

[dharmic]

Yep, regularly.

1. Design. Eagle, Altium aka Protel, Orcad, gEDA, whatever.
2. Laser print each layer to translucent "tracing" paper. Reverse the top layers before printing so the print ends up against the board.
3. Purchase pre-treated photosensitive board in single or double layer as appropriate.
4. Cut board to shape required, remove protective film, align and tape tracing paper to the board.
5. Place in an exposure box. These have three flouro UV tubes either side and, in the middle, a vacuum chamber with a plastic sheet top which sucks down and holds the paper firm against the PCB to keep the image sharp. Expose for the <trial and error time>, mine is about 80 seconds.
6. Pull the board out, remove the tracing paper, develop in Sodium Hydroxide (with gloves, tweezers) until the unwanted photoresist disappears. Rinse the board under the tap.
7. Etch the board in your choice of Ammonium Persulphate or Ferric Chloride. Both work better heated, even better still in a heated, agitated bubble tank - these are cheap.
8. Rinse again, use metho to wipe off the resist.
9. Drill.
10. Populate vias if you have any.
11. Populate the rest of the parts.
12. Spray with either copper lacquer from the hardware shop or a specific PCB lacquer from your local nerd shop.

Done.

[jlnading]

Yep, regularly.

1. Design. Eagle, Altium aka Protel, Orcad, gEDA, whatever.
2. Laser print each layer to translucent "tracing" paper. Reverse the top layers before printing so the print ends up against the board.
3. Purchase pre-treated photosensitive board in single or double layer as appropriate.
4. Cut board to shape required, remove protective film, align and tape tracing paper to the board.
5. Place in an exposure box. These have three flouro UV tubes either side and, in the middle, a vacuum chamber with a plastic sheet top which sucks down and holds the paper firm against the PCB to keep the image sharp. Expose for the <trial and error time>, mine is about 80 seconds.
6. Pull the board out, remove the tracing paper, develop in Sodium Hydroxide (with gloves, tweezers) until the unwanted photoresist disappears. Rinse the board under the tap.
7. Etch the board in your choice of Ammonium Persulphate or Ferric Chloride. Both work better heated, even better still in a heated, agitated bubble tank - these are cheap.
8. Rinse again, use metho to wipe off the resist.
9. Drill.
10. Populate vias if you have any.
11. Populate the rest of the parts.
12. Spray with either copper lacquer from the hardware shop or a specific PCB lacquer from your local nerd shop.

Done.

Thankyou for your reply dharmic,
I guess I should have made myself a little clearer, sorry. What I meant to say or mean was electroplating copper to a blank fiberglass board ( having no copper on it). I have made many PCB's before just looking for a process to literally make my own boards from fiberglass/resin to finished product. Thanks again for your quick response, Jeff.

[dharmic]

Apologies, I misread your query (obviously).

Haven't tried it before but you might want to look at the process of activating and plating through holes. Activate (make conductive) either by immersing in a graphite loaded glue or a solution based on calcium hypophosphite and ammonia and heating, drying, then throwing in a copper plating electrolysis rig.

[jlnading]

Thanks so much dharmic, I have seen the through hole process done on YT, thought I would give that a try, but I think I will give your suggestion (a solution based on calcium hypophosphite and ammonia and heating, drying) a try first. I'll look into this and let you know what results I come up with, Thanks again, Jeff.

[dharmic]

Good luck, it seems like an awful lot of stuffing around.

One other thing you might want to consider is hunting down the correct weight copper foil, a decent adhesive, and pressing or vacuum bagging the foil onto your board. That's assuming it's flat, of course.

[jlnading]

Yea, I work with composite, or I should say the guys under me do, as I inspect their work. I work in the aircraft industry and we do all kinds of composite and fiberglass even carbon fiber which can be very bad for ones health. Thanks for all the help and suggestions.