Tutorials | Open Home Automation. Make PCBs at home with magazine paper and your laser printer. How to make PCBs at home in 1 hour & W I T H O U T special materials What you need You need also: a blade cutter, scotch tape, sandpaper, kitchen paper, cotton wool, vice, hacksaw. How it works Laser printers and photocopiers use plastic toner, not ink, to draw images. Toner is the black powder that ends up on your clothes and desk when replacing the printer cartridge.
Being plastics, toner is resistant to etching solutions used for making PCBs - if only you could get it on copper! Finding the right paper The perfect paper should be: glossy, thin, and cheap. Paper preparation I discard pages heavily printed, preferring pages with normal-size text on white background. Printer setup Laser printers are not designed for handling thin, cheap paper, so we must help them feeding the sheets manually instead of using the paper tray. Printing Disclaimer: your laser printer is not designed to handle this kind of paper. This is my PC thermometer circuit printed on IEN magazine paper. Iron it! Peeling . Graphical Resistance Calculator. Dr. Monk's DIY Electronics Blog.