Well its been a LONG time coming, but I finally decided to do some more with that damn old Zac Universe, after some six months of dormancy with the project. TO be totally honest , I’ve not been motivated to do anything at all with it, deciding whether to pull my finger out and restore it or just to sell it off to someone else!! Well I decided yesterday to have a go at making the replacement stepper discs, that I did the artwork for six months ago. I may still end up selling the machine yet.. if I do it’ll be offered for sale here on AP first.
Ok here are the results from making the stepper discs. First I printed the art onto the “Pres n peel” film as per the instructions provided with the film (1st pic). First its necessary to save a ‘mirrored” copy of the art before printing it. Next I cut and prepped the blank pcb for the film by scrubbing with steel wool, and then scrubbing with water, Ajax and cloth, making sure to get all of the soap residue off. 2nd pic shows the press n peel film placed on to the pcb ready to be ironed on.
For anyone not familiar with this stuff, it is ironed on to the copper clad board with a clothes iron. In the past I’ve stuffed up a few attempts at doing this by (I think) not getting the board hot enough. Its important to get a LOT of heat into the film / board, usually about 4 to 5 minutes. (this is stated in the instructions for the Press n peel film). Also I use a piece of plain white A4 paper between the iron and the film. Once the film is ironed on and the board is nice n hot, I then held the board under running water to cool it and peeled the film off carefully. Sometimes there will be a few small bare patches where the film doesn’t iron on , these can be touched up with a pcb etch resist pen.
Last pic shows the board ready to be etched.
