Materials

Most of the materials needed you should already have. Assuming of course that you have been building some of your own boards for a while.

While I recommend the Oster 1500 Watt Toaster Oven, model #6293, your investigation of what the local WalMart, Target or other favorite department store has in stock may be more to your liking. The important thing is heat. I have found that going out and purchasing a temperature probe is not all that important, I suspect those oven dials are close enough.

The large hunk of aluminum you can pick up at any local machine shop or metal working shop. Figure that will cost you maybe $20 for it. You want some mass here, so avoid a thin sheet and try to get something beefy.

The Madell 150mm Steel Stencil Squeegee can be ordered from Madell, I highly recommend you do so. Although, you may find that an acceptable substitute may be a knife blade or scraper of some sort. You need something with a little give to it though, the Madell squeegee is a thin blade of stainless steel and flexes quite nicely.

The 500 gram jar of Kester Easy Profile 256 paste is more difficult to find. I had to google around to find someone to sell me a single jar of it. Solder paste has a very short shelf life, it should be kept refridgerated. When you order the paste, expect to have to pay to have it shipped via overnight delivery. You have to keep this stuff cold! I got a jar of paste from Time Motion Tools , their part number is WAS-01-021809. The cost of the jar, in Sept. 2005, was $83.50 plus $60 shipping.

As to the printed circuit board itself, I just cannot say enough nice things about the quality of the boards produced by Advanced Circuits! I have been in the electronics manufacturing industry for a very long time and have seen a lot of boards, the level of quality that Advanced Circuits has is "top shelf". Take a look at their "$33 Special", that is a good deal! Consider this, if you are willing to cut your boards off, you can do multiple boards (array) for an additional $50 lot charge. Fit as many boards as possible onto the 60sq inch panels, order 3 panels and you save money over what other board houses would charge you!

The stencils may be ordered from jan@pololu.com. You generate an RS274-X gerber of the cream layer, then send that to Jan. Jan will then send you a quote and a pdf of your gerber to check.