Has anybody tried using the “Thermal transfer Printing “ method to produce PCB’s instead of painting the PCB with a black paint. This foil is often used in manufacturing point of sale barcodes. The film consists of a very thin plastic film covered with a thin layer of some form of wax. I envisage that the PCB would be covered with the foil and using a fish tank air pump (using the vacuum side) the foil would stick tightly to the blank PCB. It would now be possible to use a low power laser to print the required image before etching.

[en.wikipedia.org]

... I've made this some 20+ years ago with a common thermotransfer-printer -- i think this was an Okimate 20 with a colour head.

The wax was etch-resitant, but for better stability I've remelted it after printing with a hot-air gun.

Most transfer-printed PCB's I've seen the last years were made with laserprinted toner on a thin sheet of (glossy) paper and transferred on the PCB with an iron ... but this methode is not 100% light-tight, so I'm 'laserengraving' my paint-coated PCB's and etching them ...

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Viktor
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