One of more advanced PCB manufacturing methods is exposing laminate copper boards covered by photo resistive layer through mask. Using UV light in manufacturing PCB’s has many benefits according to other methods: you can get thin tracks like 0.2mm. You couldn’t do this by using other home techniques like laser printers or hand artwork; other advantage is that this method gives clean image – smooth edges of PCB tracks. Little bit effort and you can compare results to commercial products. And pf course third benefit is speed and multiple replications of your boards by using the same mask. In this article is described the manufacturing of an automatic ultraviolet light source exposure box.
Parts for UV box
Case with organic glass
Panel
UV lamps ballasts and starters
Controller
Case
Case is made of 5mm wood board wired with screws.
Making a control panel
Control panel consists of two parts:â€Power control†and “Automatic controlâ€
POWER switch is used to turn on/off power of the UV box. Green LED indicates the ON. MANUAL/AUTOMATIC switch is used to power l the UV lamps manually or automatically. Switches UPSIDE and UNDERSIDE are used to enable upper and lower lamps separately – in case you are using single or double sided boards.
When automatic mode is selected, then by pressing buttons MIN UP, MIN DOWN, SEC UP, SEC DOWN exposure time is selected. START starts timer counter and powers the lamps through relays. STOP/CLEAR is not implemented yet. LCD displays the Time of exposure, and after start is pressed it shows remaining time of UV exposure.
UV Lamps
