making the circuits

is there any reason why you couldn't make a good pcb with just solder paste? like if you simply toke a piece of plastic and drew your circuit with solder paste?


what I'm thinking is, if we could make pcb's with solder paste, you simply print a plastic board with tracks for the solder paste, set the component on top of it then throw it in an oven. does the plastic melt before solder? this would obviously be wastefull of material but it would easily give us the ability to make pcb's, especially since we have an easy paste extruder.

Quote

does the plastic melt before solder?

Yes the plastic melts at about half the temperature of the solder.

We can get away with pouring molten solder into plastic because the specific heat capacity of plastic is much higher than metal, so the metal freezes before the plastic melts. If you heat them both together the plastic will melt first though.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2009 02:58PM by nophead.

---

[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

I thought this was done already: [blog.reprap.org]

---

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The whole is more than the sum of its parts." - Aristotle

[www.cyrozap.com]