Looking up the search community feature of this topic I see that it has been in the area of 4 years that a post on making your own PC boards has been posted. I have followed through on the old posts and have found out that some of the part #`s given are no longer valid (Radio Shack). Does anyone have anything new on this topic? I do not want to pay $50 dollars or so (Express PCB .com) for 3 boards. I need to make some small boards for an 11 component circuit.I thought that maybee MG Chemicals 1 oz.single sided photosentized boards would do. Thanks
Go to the Jameco Electronics web site and request their printed catalog. They have two or three pages of PC board photoetching supplies listed (pages 171-173).
The only photoetching supplies I have been able to find at any Radio Shack recently is the etchant.
Mouser Electronics in Mansfield, Texas, sells PC etching supplies, too; pages 2165 through 2177 of their printed catalog.
Why not use perfboards or general purpose boards from Radio Shack ? For such a small number of boards. I do it all of the time instead of etching my own boards. I don’t get out the etchant until I need 6 or more.
I have been using stripboard, also called veroboard over the years. I live in North East USA and buy it from the UK. Not too expensive though at least nine years since I bought any.
http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/stripbd.htm
There use to be stripboard software on the 'Net but have not looked for it recently. Made it a little easier to plan stripboard projects. I use to use it when I used Windows software but not anymore.
Do a Google search for stripboard software.
Rich
I’m with jbinkley60. I use universal perfboards for one-of projects. Like him, I wouldn’t etch a board until I had to make quite a few of them. I used to etch boards, and do the layouts with stick-on pads and tape. I found it was way too much trouble to do the layout, expose the boards, etch them, then drill all those holes for just one or two boards. Worst of all, if I made a mistake in the layout and didn’t discover it until the board was etched, it meant carving up the traces and adding jumper wires or even trashing the board and starting over. No, for just one board or two or three, universal perf boards are the answer for me. So they don’t look nice and neat with all those jumper wires running all over the place, but so what. Another idea, have you ever thought of wirewrapping?