So today was “play with nasty chemicals” day in the garage… and the results were amazing!

I’d gone over the “DIY PCB” kit I got from work on Friday, and realized the kit was incomplete and didn’t have all the necessary chemicals. Since I had to work Saturday (boooo) I stopped by Fry’s on the way home to pick up a few items.

When I got to their “DIY Electronics” section, I quickly realized it’d be cheaper to pick up a full new kit than try and piece together what I needed (also, they didn’t have all the necessary individual chemicals). I picked up their MG Chemicals Photofabrication Kit for about $50, and since I already had the high intensity UV bulb from the kit from work, left with that.

Talking with my dad about the custom-made boards, we quickly realized that with the extra boards the kit provides I could also make the custom LED tail lights I’ve wanted to make for our Barracuda as well as a proper third brake light for the ’86 Corvette. That will be future projects, but it’s well in my mind now.

All in all, the whole process took about an hours to do, and the results are far better than I expected. There is a little bit of ‘missing copper’ around some of the leads, but nothing that the soldering won’t fix when it gets to that point in the process. The new batch LEDs have been ordered from my contact in Hong Kong, so that gives me about a week to get sorted on setting up and running the board on the CNC router at work to punch the necessary holes. I’ll also be looking for a black or silver paint to put on the LED side of the board before I run it on the router.