Custom etched RFID antenna circuit boards

6x RFID Antennas custom etched
Originally uploaded by cdine

This is pretty neat!
Down at the Hackerbot Labs, 3ric ordered up a $65 RFID antenna to play with, but $65 is a bit expensive for an RFID antenna, especially when we can duplicate it on the cheap!
So, what did we do, you ask? It's called the "Toner Transfer Method" (Google, makezine.com)
First step, take a nice high-res scan of the original circuit board (Pics), get it into some graphics program (We used Photoshop and Illustrator..), then mask out the leads and vias on their own layer(s) as plain black. We used Illustrator for the actual antenna side, because we wanted the best representation of the curves possible (That's important since it's particular to wavelength and all that.) From there, print out the mask on Stables Photo Basic paper (Yes, that exact paper) and you're ready to transfer the toner on the paper to a fresh copper PCB with an iron. After that, massage the paper off in some water (This takes some patience), then etch the board in some chemical PCB etchant. Once that step's done, remove the toner from your leads with acetone, and voila! You're left with a circuit board, in our case - a sheet holding 6 almost pristine copied of the original RFID antenna.

After that, we just need to get the select few components to solder on and test it out. More to come on that this coming weekend.

I'm not sure what the per-antenna cost is for our solution here, but you can be sure it's far less than $65 a pop!

This was the first time I've ever done something quite like this, thanks to 3ricj and Æther for getting this project going and having me work on it.