BCQLI 10 PCB Circuit Board Thermal Transfer Paper A4 Size Transfer Paper DIY Circuit Board Special Paper

I'm experienced with the "Press-n-Peel" blue transfer paper, but thought I would give this stuff a try. Making good PCBs with fine lines takes some practice and proper prep which I thought I would share here. First, the blue press-n-peel has the advantage of transferring an additional protective layer on your PCB when you iron it on. The blue stuff sticks to the toner, and when the transfer is done, your pcb traces will not only have the toner on them, but the blue stuff. This yellow transfer paper simply makes it where the toner is easily transferred off of the paper onto the pcb. I didn't have a problem with this, but I also haven't done any super fine lines yet. With the blue stuff, I can go down to about 10 mil without a problem. With either method, I'd like to explain my process: First, do yourself a favor and make your traces as large as you can if you have the space. There's no point trying to run 10 mil or less if you don't need to, and give yourself some clearance between traces and other pads. For general purpose stuff where I have plenty of room, I run 25 mil traces unless I need to go between some IC pads. I plug in my iron to let it start heating up. I also use Ferric Chloride for etch, and I also have a cheap stirring/hot plate and get it up to 125F. Trying to etch at 70F takes FOREVER. I found that 120-130F works great and I can etch a board in about 2-3 minutes. Hotter than 130F and fumes start to come off the FeCl. I 3d printed an "insert" into the bottom of my glass pan which raises the board off the bottom and allows room for the little stirrer pill to spin. The stirring is great as you don't have to agitate the solution while etching. I use an infrared laser beam thing that you can get for about 50 bucks to monitor the temp but a simple thermometer would work too. Next I cut my board to size and I bevel the edges of the copper slightly with a file. I find that board right from the factor can have their edges slightly raised which makes it difficult to get pressure down near the edge when ironing on. Just a couple of strokes across the edge takes care of that. I then put on rubber gloves so I don't get oils on the board. I scrub the board in 4 directions with steel wool, then wipe the whole thing down with acetone. I then do a 15-30 second "pre-etch" in my etching solution (I use Ferric Chloride) of the entire blank board. I found the pre-etch allows the toner to stick SOOO much better to the copper. After the pre-etch I rinse the board in water and dry it off completely. For ironing, I use what can be described on Amazon as a "Sealing iron" or "hobby iron". It's smaller than a regular clothes iron, and an exact temperature can be set, and there are no holes in the surface of the iron. One thing you need to make sure is that the iron is DEAD FLAT. I did this by running it over finer and finer grits of sandpaper on a slat surface. You're essentially honing the bottom. I went down to 800 grid to make it really smooth. I also beveled one of the edges of the iron with a roundover so I can put additional pressure on a small area. I don't think you can get enough pressure with a standard clothes iron and get good results. I run the iron at 400F (200C). Make sure the iron is fully heated. When I print out my PCB I also include the edge cuts of the board so I can line it up properly to the copper board. I cut it so that I have some extra paper where I can tape the paper to the PCB, but I don't want to iron over this tape because you can't get enough heat and pressure for any traces under that tape. I then start with an overall heating, starting at the tape edge and moving the iron slowly to the edge which isn't taped down (I only tape along one edge). This gets me an initial "stick" to the board. Then I work again starting at the tape edge with additional pressure. Pretty much as much pressure as I can put on the iron while still moving it. I work from one side to the other. The whole ironing process takes maybe 60 seconds for a 2.75 x 4" board, which is what I use for most of my small projects (sometimes I cut that board in half for 2x2.75" if I can fit everything). Then, and a really important part, is that you must let the board cool down to room temp before peeling off, otherwise the toner can just peel right off the copper. I mean, let it cool COMPLETELY. It doesn't take long, 3-4 minutes. I do all this work in my woodshop and I have a table saw with a cast iron top which is absolutely freezing, so I throw it on there for a minute! Once completely cool, slowly peel the toner off. I had 100% complete success using this paper the first time using this method, but sometimes you might need to touch some spots up. You can use a sharpie to do that. If my board is complex with very fine lines, I'll usually have an enlarged printout of the board that I can use for reference and fix any issues. Ok, time for etching. The solution is now up to 120-130F and I put the board in it. I check every minute for progress and pull it out when done. I usually don't use ground planes in my board, so I remove a lot of copper but it will only takes a couple of minutes when the solution is warmed. I then rinse the board in the sink and examine it to make sure all copper is removed. If not, I'll throw it back in for 30 seconds. I then leave the toner on because it makes finding thru pads easier, and drill any necessary holes for the thru holes. I have a benchtop drill press and it works great. I put a piece of MDF under the board for support and have some cheap drills I bought here. The ones I have have a larger shaft and are much easier to use. You can hold the board up to a light to make sure you've drilled all necessary holes out. Don't forget mounting holes! I always use 3mm screws for mounting and drill out 3.5mm holes so I have some leeway. Finally, I scrub off the toner first with the steel wool, then clean up the rest with acetone. You CAN just use acetone, but I found when I do that the whole thing stains the rest of the board, so I try to get almost all of the toner off first with the steel wool. Hope this helps!

After trying multiple times different methods to transfer my designs onto the PCB I found this buy chance and it was a good luck strike because it does work with a very little touches from my part. You do need to play a bit with you Laser Printer settings because the paper is very thin, it took me 8 tries to find the right settings, but when I did, I was very happy with the results. So I would recommend this for DIY projects you get good quallity for the money.

This paper works spectacularly well for toner transfer. The only downside is that it naturally wants to curl up and is hard to feed into the printer (thought the current batch I have is less problematic). If it is wanting to curls the edges on you, the best trick i have found is to fold the leading edge about 1/4". That helps it feed straight into the printer.

So, ok... First off, I've been doing boards since I was uhhhh 14? I'm 49 now, so I've seen a lot with PCB fabrication. I've used Sharpie, tape, decals, photo-resist, and of course, toner. I've even worked in a place that made PCBs the industrial way. Out of all this, toner is my first choice because it's cheap as dirt and all the other methods have their issues. Working with toner, I've used glossy laser paper, magazine paper, clear cutter machine vinyl, and now this paper. Believe it or not, my two favorites are now the vinyl film and this paper. Vinyl actually works very well, you'd be surprised, but it can't do miracles any more than this paper can, and thus you'll still have printer and laminator/iron issues. On my first try, I don't think the laminator was hot enough, and my print along the edge of the PCB cracked and moved a teeny bit in places. The traces came out fine to the eye except for one very tiny crack in one place across the entire board, and since it was in a pad it didn't matter. I etched the resulting board straight away in 1 part hydrochloric + 2 parts hydrogen peroxide, and in a shocking 5 mins it was done. Only one problem - all of the artwork pitted a bit. This is NOT the fault of the paper, not even the fault of the laminator that i use, really. It's the simple fact that laser printers generally don't make a solid coating of toner, period. They print documents, bro, it's what they're actually for. So, the board is going to work, since the pits don't extend through the whole foil thickness. It just isn't very pretty. I've noticed that this paper is a bit more translucent than normal paper, so next time I'm going to print two copies of the art, laminate the first, and use registration marks in the artwork to mount and laminate the second copy over the first. With a little luck, it won't drift out, and I'll get a much better etch due to the 2x thickness of the toner transfer. I'll come back and let you all know how that went. I like this stuff so far. Any method that works the first time, pits or not, has a lot of promise. Once you work out your method, I think this paper will treat you very well. Edit for 2023: A lot of years went by and I tried some interesting alternative methods for PCB fabrication, amounting to a cold process where you mix acetone and alcohol -just right- and apply that to your printed artwork, slap it against your cleaned blank PCB piece, and press hard till it dries. It worked well for me so I stopped using heat transfer... but then I looked back at my older work and was like "IS it better? Is it really?" Pits and cracks and you name it. So I went back to trying this stuff again and was blown away by the superior results. But I also didn't use a laminator this time. Instead, I just whipped out my trusty clothes iron, ramped up the heat to say a 7 out of 10, and LEANED on that sucker nice and hard. Board got so frickin hot I had to let it cool before I could even touch it, lol, but omg what nice results. Not a pit nor crack to be found, and I didn't even have to soak it to remove the paper. It practically just fell off with the artwork neatly bonded to the copper. Just make absolutely sure your copper is CLEAN, like NASA level cleanroom clean. I use steel wool to polish and then a toothpaste rub and thorough rinse to do a final cleaning. Make sure your print is as dense and dark as you can make it. Make sure your heater is HOT, like whoopsie the paper got a little singed kind of hot. Make sure you allow the board to cool so that the ink isn't still molten AT ALL. I think if you do these basic steps, you'll love this stuff. Rick NR417

Product would not print the image properly on the sheet. Only bits and pieces of the image printed. I tried several sheets. I used a Brother HL-2270DW laser printer with a fresh factory toner cartridge, TN-450. The toner will not uniformly transfer to the smooth (glossy) side of this material. It prints fine on the rough paper side but cannot be used to do heat transfer to copper clad boards. The Brother printer cannot be used with these sheets for their designed intent. The seller should have published that these sheets do not work in some laser printers. If anyone knows of an after-market toner that works in a brother printer that will work properly on heat transfer sheets please publish it. I should note that the printer works fine in printing onto laser photo paper of all kinds and on laser transparency sheets as well as inkjet transparency sheets. I printed on several of the transfer sheets and took a photo of the best I could do. Hopefully, the photo image transferred to this site ok and one can see the difference between the image formed on the yellow transfer sheet and a laser transparency print (white background). They both printed at 1200 dpi resolution set on the printer. These were printed on Nov. 20, 2019

This worked for my first time trying the toner process. On 0.2mm sized traces no less. I printed the copper trace in black on my led printer. On highest quality and paper type on heavyweight. My printer happens to have an envelope mode. It prints slow and the paper goes straight through the machine and falls off the back side. This avoids the 180° bend on the paper. I felt this would preserve the quality of the print best. I pre-heated the blank PCB with my flat iron for few seconds. Slapped the yellow paper on it. Pressed 30s with the iron. I finished by doing one slow smoothing pass, just on case. Then I dunk the board with the glued paper in cold water. After two minutes the paper peeled off easily. It worked at the first try! Of course I had forgotten to print mirrored image. I did few more tests and it worked every time. I am thinking it might be possible to do solder mask and silkscreen with this. The difficulty will be in the alignment of course. But you can always quickly wash with acetone and try again.

When transferring the toner to the metal, 95-99% of it transfers all the way, some of it doesn't. Definitely the paper and metal need to cool almost to room temperature, at least, in order to peel the yellow paper off, without the toner getting stuck in between deciding to stay on the metal, or go with the paper. When I do get mostly good transfers, I find that some sort of goo, that seems to be invisible to my eye, is also transferring to the metal, because the nice cleaned, polished metal that isn't under the toner, seems to resist etching, just like the toner part. I would probably have given this a '2 stars' because mostly it's wasted a lot of my time, but it _is_ cheap, and if I can get it to work, then we'll be at an even 3 stars. Leaving the iron on for a longer time, much longer, makes the paper brittle and flaky, and it really doesn't want to transfer, then. Paper is pretty thin an sensitive - if you rub it very much, it'd going to wear through. So - still working on temperatures (which I measure off the yellow paper with a IR thermometer), times, pressures, surface roughnesses, etc. It's like I'm on the edge of it working, but it's not working yet. I'm applying the toner to flat aluminum bar stock, and flat steel plates. I'm utilizing & attempting various chemicals to etch (metal) without the toner popping right off. Toner on metal seems to be pretty fragile, too, so concentrated lye popped the design right off, first 5 seconds of etching Al. Having more luck with more dilute lye. Ferric chloride leaves an uneven surface finish on aluminum if brushed on. HCl, citric acid - tend to etch ok, but the toner still likes to fall off if you look at it funny. May just have to go with some other solution, toner's not very thick anyway, it's not a great deep-etch resist. Which is what I'm trying, not a simple PCB.

I was originally worried about this product after looking at some reviews that said the paper would jam or melt in their laser printers, however I took a chance on it anyway. It worked exactly as expected in my home Canon MF232W printer (though I did tape a regular piece of paper to the back of the PCB transfer paper as a kind of carrier and to add some thickness). The printer didn't jam at all, toner came out exactly as it was supposed to and the transfer to my piece of aluminum worked great. I never tried it without a carrier but, considering how smooth everything went, I'm thinking it should probably work just as good. I think some of those other reviewers were maybe using a Brother laser printer as I have read from multiple sites that those printers use a special kind of toner that requires a higher temperature which doesn't even work with the name brand Press and Peel Blue transfer paper. In any case, I will definitely be using this paper again to transfer images and text to metal. I just wish I could adjust the toner density on my printer, though that is no fault of the product obviously (just a suggestion for first time users to do so if possible).