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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: November 6th, 2023

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  • I’m assuming you’re not super familiar with PCB fabrication? The toner transfer is a way to get small, repeatable, and precise definition of the component pads and traces - at home - without needing the expensive industrial machinery that fab houses have.

    The toner ’print’ is a negative image, placed on a sheet of copper mounted to (usually) fiberglass. Much like masking off areas when painting, the ‘print’ protects the copper surface in select areas you want to keep safe when the whole board goes into the acid bath to dissolve the unprotected copper - leaving copper only where your ‘print’ was, and hopefully no shorts/grounds.

    Definitely cool to have the ability to DIY fine pitch if you’re manually mounting SMT components or want higher board density, beats out the hand drawn permanent marker lines I’ve done in the past 😅


  • As an expat who’s recently visited back, I’m astounded at how UK smokers behave. Not even on a night out either; the chef on break flicking the finished end into the street puddle, folks lighting up right outside shop entrances, or the general lack of awareness towards smoking around children. Socially learned behavior that never gets the same tutting you might a speeding car or queue jumper.

    I took a trip abroad years ago and was bewildered to see a guy light up and then pull out a foil-type pouch too. Not only did the butt go into that pouch for later disposal, but all his ash did too. I’ve heard Japan is much the same way, even Americans are far better culturally about sequestering themselves before smoking.