Make:

Okay, it prints, but how good is the print?
The video quality and lighting is so terrible that you can't see any detail.
Also, what is the smallest line width printed on the pcb? What is the reliability of the smallest line width it can print?

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Also wanted to ask, if this is supposed to work as a regular printer and a pcb printer,(as stated on your web site) what happens when you remove the pcb "black cartridge with yellow ink" and replace it with regular black ink cartridge? Will you not have a mixture of the two in the ink well that the cartridge fits into?

Your very detailed and described instructions has no mention of cleaning the pcb after sanding it. Goes from sanding to printing.

Pictures of the pcb's show no close-up detail. Blurry.

If I am gonna spend $65 on this kit, I would want to know the answers to the above questions and see better pictures and dimensions of traces.

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Please shoot some closeups with a good camera using a macro lense, a tripod and in focus. To make the sale, we'd like to be able to discern the quality of printing and etching. Otherwise it's a good idea.

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The concept sounds great, and the accuracy to do 2 sided boards is even more tempting. It'd save a lot of steps and the blue film I've been using.

I understand the advantage of staying within the Freeware Eagle size limits, but this does sound small. I'm suggesting a future version replaces the black plastic tray with a custom tray with large capacity for bigger boards (possibly a standard board or project box dimension).

I think I've accidentally printed way outside the space of a CD on one of these printers, so I'm sure you could print a 5"x5" square at least. Hope you or the community can come up with this in the future. Thanks!

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The video was worse than useless, it resulted in me not even bothering to look into the product further. If they can't take the time or make the effort to create a decent video, I doubt that they've taken the time to do a decent job of the product.

And as a general note to the Make community, please stop and think about what media is best for your presentation. Just because you can make a video doesn't mean you should. And if video does present a process well, edit it to make it useful without being boring. This particular video didn't need to be more than 30 seconds long, if that. We really don't need to see 60 seconds of a printer printing. We've all seen that and it's nothing new.

Sorry, I guess I woke up on the cranky side of the bed this morning.

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Thanks for the comments! As stated on Step 5 of the tutorial, the resolution is very good. Reports have been down to 4mil lines and 4 mil spacing for some inkjet printers. I have personally tried 6 mil lines and 6 mil spacing without problems but your results will vary depending on the etching setup. Basically when you have tiny lines the copper starts to get undercutting and you get broken traces unless you are very careful. The printing of course works to the DPI limit of the printer which is 1440dpi or better and the ink doesn't wash off so your theoretical limit is very tiny. 12 mil lines and 12 mil spacing is no problem for even the roughest etching setup.

This product was intended as a hobby product. At $65 and low expected quantities, I can't hire a professional photographer or video guy but in my opinion the tutorial very complete down to the exact printing technique and times/temp to heat the board. We are giving away 10 blank boards to anyone that takes some good result photos with our kit so our site will evolve as more results come in.

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The ink carts on the Epson R280 is just a tiny plunger and there really isn't any ink mixing. We took a printer that was printing a lot before and put in a yellow filled black ink cart. The yellow ink looks yellow on the first print which means there was no mixing of the black. We put the black back in and it looks the same to us as it did before. Yellow -> black is an easy change because yellow is a weak color. However, these are just our results and we take no responsibility for messed up colors. We recommend you buy a separate printer to print the PCBs. An Epson R280 can be bought for $50 used - $99 brand new off ebay so it isn't very expensive.

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I gave this three tries over the weekend, with no luck yet. The yellow ink 'resist' is not resisting and the traces end up getting etched away.

The tutorial says "we like Ammonium Persulfate" it does _not_ say "ferric chloride will disolve the ink" which is what is happening.

I do wonder about the curing process. I'm using a clothes iron and I wonder what is worse: too little heat or too much.

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