[epineh]

I have to say first up that this is not my idea, I'm just following in the footsteps of this fella here :

http://techref.massmind.org/techref/pcb/etch/c84-st.htm

The build starts with me buying a perfectly normal Epson C87 Stylus inkjet printer. The mods in the above page describe a C84 printer, which is no longer available new, I just hoped that the C87 was similiar enough to do the same thing.

Anybody following my second router build will know that I have the next three months to build the electronics for it, I won't go into too much detail here, but enough to say that I need to make quality PCB's for my microcontroller experiments and other CNC stuff...after a lot of research, I decided to take the path of modding a printer to fit a blank PCB with a base carrier directly through, involving raising the print head mechanism and associated equipment. The result is being able to print directly onto the board, the ink forming a "resist" layer that will not let the copper dissolve when etching, leaving the required artwork.

AnyHoo, here is the obligatory "before" shot of the printer:

Russell.