Hello,
I’m in a urge. Saturday, a super basic through hole PCB to etch, and nearly empty black toner (of course !).
Idea : I created a color scheme with red pads and traces in order to use color toner ; but the drill marks turned into black ! They will not help much.
Playing with background color has no effect. White or black or whatever, the drill marks are black.
Why ??? Maybe a bug, and I should open a ticket ?
Of course the printer refuses to print if the black cardridge is removed.
Am I doomed ? Is installing an image virtual printer, printing to a JPG or PNG, and editing the file the only solution ?
Why does KiCad replace drill marks with black when using a custom color scheme instead of leaving them alone as it does with the default color scheme ?
[EDIT] it seems Kicad always draws black markers when selecting Output mode : Color
Of course I already shaked the black cardridge
I’m not answering the question, just sharing an experiment…
Nearly no more black toner. Opened the KiCad PCB bitmap in Toshop, after it was printed into a TIF using a very old version of PDF Creator. 1200 dpi.
Asked PS to replace colors. Surprisingly, PS mixes colors - or the printer does it - in an unexpected way ; of course, densities were maxed up in the printer settings : got such a thick toner layer that it went all other the place. As a result, the best transfer I ever got (after I decreased the number of passes in the hacked laminator).
I never read about using a color laser printer and playing with colors.
It definitely is worth it. Printers will maybe deposit more or less toner depending on the color ; maybe it could be worth feeding a monochrome laser printer with something else than black !
The printer is a HP Color LaserJet MFP M477fdw ; all colors were set to +5 ; I asked PS to print a magenta RVB image.
Yes I know, it is not worth tinkering with laser transfer anymore. But I don’t konw any manufacturer that can give me a PCB within two hours at most.
(maybe reinventing the wheel…)
[EDIT] the color toner was much more difficult to remove. Aceton was not enough, had to use a chlorinated solvent (chloroform)
: I created a color scheme with red pads and traces in order to use color toner ; but the drill marks turned into black ! They will not help much.