Anyway, it would seem like with all this work he could have used the laser to define a photomask on copper clad board with some photosensitive material there, then just watch in the iron chloride solution as people have been doing for ages?
2 layer PCBs are really cheap these days and you don’t end up with vats of chemicals left over..
Anyway cool stuff, I’ve tried to do similar stuff and has always just found that paying $50 for a few PCBs is actually much more economical than this type of setup.
The problem I have is that I have to wait weeks and get a hundred PCBs when I only want one.
Even here in Germany, where local PCB manufacturing is usually very expensive compared to the options above, services like PCBJoker exist, which are only about 20 to 30 % more expensive.
This dude has some absolutely jaw dropping (sputtering, scanning electron microscope, waterjet etc) videos on his channel; it's definitely worth checking out the rest of his back catalogue.
8 mil traces on a DIY circuit board is pretty good, it's good enough to be able to do some quite fine surface mount parts.
With regards to chemistry - a staggering array of chemical supplies can be purchased from the hardware store, druggist, or supermarket; the trick is knowing what common name to look for, to get a particular chemical. Searching online for permutations of what you're looking for, and "household", "MSDS", or "common name" can yield some good results.
Quotes that let you know you're doing real home science.
