[dorkbotsea-blabber] Soldering station + PCB ?

[Wim Lewis]

I'm a little late to the discussion but I have to chime in that  
buying a decent iron is worth it. Sure, "a poor workman blames his  
tools", and I've made plenty of good solder joints with a $5 surplus- 
bin iron with a half-dissolved tip ... but it's much easier with a  
good iron!

On Jun 21, 2008, at 1:45 PM, <alex at alexcphoto.com> wrote:
> On another note, has anyone tried this process?.. To me it looks to  
> easy
> to be true.
>
> http://www.5bears.com/pcb.htm

(Toner-transfer using photo paper from an office store instead of  
special-purpose paper.)

I mostly use the special purpose paper for this, but I've read that  
any very glossy paper, such as from a magazine, works OK. I've even  
made a board using plain old non-glossy copier paper --- I wouldn't  
recommend it, since a lot of paper fibers got embedded in the  
transferred toner and led to tiny hairline copper bridges between  
traces which I had to clean up later. But it *did* work (and with  
things I had on hand at the time).