Davent where do you get your photosensitive boards? Also how do you develop them? Do you have a special UV bed for it or use some sort of makeshift light? Do you just drill the holes with a dremel tool or something? I'm really interested as I too love making PCB designs. I've never gotten one made though 
I've almost sent in orders to BatchPCB and Futurlec to get them fabricated but the fear of it not working coupled with the cost made me chicken out.
Hi Mike,
I use MG Chemicals' boards and developer which i get in a local electronics store. I've also used no-name boards and developer i've picked up in shops in Toronto as well as the various boards from companies in the Digikey catalogue. A city the size of Chicago's gotta have a few shops you could walk into and pick up some board and developer. Digikey (as well as the other suppliers big and small) has boards from a few different companies but i don't know whether they carry developer. The MG developer is sodium hydroxide. If you google
sodium hydroxide pcb developer or
sodium carbonate PCB developer you should get some instructions on mixing your own from grocery or hardware store products.
For exposing the boards i just use regular flourescent tubes. I used to stack up phone books, Digikey catalogs and other tomes on the kitchen counter under the cupboards to raise the boards to within an inch or so of the under cupboard lights. Now, above my workbench are a pair of 4' tubes recessed between the joists and i've screwed a piece of clear plexglass that was lying around, to the joists so i have a shelf just below the tubes. The PCB's now get exposed on the shelf there.
I use a frameless picture frame from Ikea to hold the transparency/PCB sandwich securely during the exposure which, with the boards i've been using is about 12 minutes. I print out two copies of the artwork onto a piece of transparency with a laser printer and make a sandwich of those. Before we bought a laser printer i used to take a copy of the artwork to the local print shop and get them to make a copy onto a transparency with one of their
uber photocopiers and with those i only ever used one layer of transparency but with my cheap laser printer i need the insurance of two layers of art. So expose for 12 minute then into the developer for ~ 90sec's then it's ready to etch. For a developer tray i just use a little dollar store Tupperware type container marked for
developer use only. Dollar store would probably have the picture frames as well.
For drilling the holes i use a Dremel in a drill stand and use a set of HSS wire drills from Lee Valley. Have always used HSS drills and have had people tell me you can't do boards with them but I've got thousands of holes that say otherwise. And that being said, last week my brother delivered some carbide drill bits from Drill Bit City that he brought back from south of the border, look forward to giving those a spin.
Using ExpressPCB for doing the schematics and board design.
Take care,
dave
