kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Vesa Solonen <vesa.solonen@xxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

This goes mostly to feature wish list, but some technical details may be
of interest. The use of the feature would be (laser) toner transfer
process for PCBs.

After some extensive testing it seems many printers/drivers do not print
vectors as well as raw raster if one wishes to get the most contrast or
toner density. E.g. with any settings vector input puts less toner on
the paper than the same rasterized to printers native resolution.

For the process in general, color printers are way better as the toner
is finer and has better binder. Also the paper type setting makes a
great difference as one would guess, 'Rough' getting the most on HP M452nw.

Rasterizing e.g. the PDF-output is possible, but it is not optimal as
the rasterizer does not have any clue what it is trying to produce (a
PCB). Also many available tools rasterize with anti aliasing that just
makes it worse as the output is one bit per pixel anyway.

So some smart rasterizer (with grid fitting) to one bit per pixel raster
at selected resolution (dpi) would be needed. My guess is that raw png
output would be the most usable.

-Vesa