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Mania 1 - Make PCBs at home

Published: 2026-01-08
Updated: 2026-01-08
By Mate Lakat

In Hardware.

tags: mania pcb 3dprinter

For some reason I have several traumas stuck with me from childhood. They evolved into periodically appearing activites searching for solutions for problems that are already solved. I could fight them and make myself understand that my time is not worth spending with them, but they keep coming up. They cannot be silenced. Silencing them would make them to be louder. So I decided to observe them, and try to understand them. It does not necessarily mean that I will engage in those activities, but would rather do some reasearch on them and maybe I will learn something about myself in the journey.

One of these topics is creating PCBs at home easily. In 2010 I went as far as purchasing a 40kg Xerox Printer and printing wax on a flexible PCB: https://youtu.be/-9Vna-IQUiQ

Did I ever make any other PCBs with that? No. Do I want to make PCBs because of wanting to do electronics projects? I don't think so.

I find something enjoyable in removing some copper from an FR4 board with different technologies.

I also have a 3D printer, and at some time I came across this information from someone 10 years ago:

  • video on the same topic
  • which also has a blog post

And I am thinking about trying it out. One of the comments were saying that they recommend the ink to be machine marking ink:

I have found that that machine marking ink (gentian violet + alcohol + shellac) works exceedingly well. The lines come out very fine with no raggedness. If you need to cross over lines, the intersection is perfect. I bought my marking ink in a spray can. I would be interested if anyone else has found this method useful.

And machine marking ink is something that is very exciting for me, as I was watching a lot of clickspring videos

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