If anybody needs button boards for Heatermeter


 

John Bostwick

TVWBB Wizard
If anybody needs button boards for Heatermeter, let me know in a pm. Going to do a pcb with about 20 of them. Going to do a toner transfer PCB. Hopefully if everthing works out I should have some available after this Monday.


Wow, love the new forum, so much easier to post
 
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Well, I started tonight and did a test board, I have not drilled it yet as I seem to not be able to find my dremel:( lol

Anyways the following picture show what it looks like after I put it in the ferric chloride solution. you can see some double images on the mounting holes, since I was just doing a test board of just one, the iron was sticking to the paper making it hard to keep from moving a tad. Going to change paper as I had much better results with using magazine paper then using glossy photo paper.



The next photo shows after removing the toner. As you can see its not bad, but it its not great either. I had to touch up a couple places with a marker, so the lines are not crisp and the pads have some spots that could be better.



I think the problem was with the paper I used to transfer the toner. It was thicker and it had a sticky layer on the opposite side of the glossy side making the iron stick. Magazine page gives much better results and I will be using that for those that would like a board.

Now its time to find my Dremel, lol.
 
Tonight at 3am I woke up and did another board, this time using just a page from a magazine, as you can see it turned out much better then using photo glossy papper. I also made the traces a tad bigger and moved them a little to get better results from a hobbiest board. After my roommates get up and get to work, I will drill and cut each board. This board is the smaller of the two boards I bought. I fit 15 boards on this one the other can hold about 30-40 boards.

Just after the water bath to remove the paper, you can still see some whitish parts on the board and a good scrub with a green pad gets rid of the paper residue.
p14cm.jpg





And after hte etching, my etching chemical is over a year old and this board took about 10 minutes to fully etch, nice and slow. I think this gives better results and keeps the etching under the toner to a minimum
15ogj10.jpg


Next, the drilling, which for me is the hardest part, and very time consuming and I cant drink beer:(, need a very steady hand.
 
Yeah those look great! I tried to make the button board as hobbyist friendly as possible, with big fat traces, good separation, and everything on one side. Was there any spot in particular that was difficult to get good results?

I also found that magazine paper worked a lot better in the Brother laser printer we have at the office. It just comes off the paper really easily and like you said the iron doesn't stick to the back of it. About half the time it wouldn't feed properly though, did you do some magic like tape it to another piece of paper or something?
 
I drilled some boards, alot easier then I thought it would be I first used 1/32 drill bit and then for the button, I used a router bit that dremel has, not sure what size but its a tad bigger then 1/32.

I then put some rosin flux all over the board and took some solder and covered the traces, to protect them andd to help with the soldering later.

and the results. Im still partial to the 4 buttons of my other heatermeter, easier to navigate, for me. But, it works great and This will be for a good friend of mine, so he should like.

30vow9t.jpg


I put the connection on the opposite side so that its not in the way when mounting
16a8tj5.jpg


xng09f.jpg


@Brian
The hardest part seemed to be the getting the button hole and the connector(-+) pads big enough to protect them when I drill. The center holes were tough to get bigger as they had pads on either side. The resister pads I did not worry about as much. I just had to reroute a couple of traces to give me more room for pads, used Microsoft Paint to do the rerouting. The laser printer Samsung seems to work fairly well with magazine paper. Although it still jams from time to time. It helps to have a nice clean cut peice at a full width of the page. It wants to jam more often when the page is torn out of the magazine or is smaller then standard size paper. I did a print of 30 boards on a peice last night and transfered to the copper and after ironing, I did not even have to put in water the paper came right off leaving the traces on the copper, bueatifully. The gloss just came off smoothly. But, it had to come off as I forgot to mirror it, lol.

@D
Thanks
 
I have a real PCB version I found under a pile of junk in the HeaterMeter labs. PM me your address and I'll mail it to you.
 
The VCC pin can go anywhere 3.3V is on the board, I'd suggest the VCC pin on the FTDI connector. The output pin needs to go to the bottom right hole of where the button would normally be mounted.
 

 

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