SMD boards, Tapatalk and laptop issues

[stevie1556]

Apologies to the 3 guys I'm sending SMD boards to, I've been riddled with problems again. Tapatalk has completely stopped working now and when I try opening up a forum in it, it says 'Network error. Please try again later. (get_config)'. It happens for all forums, and I've tried unstalling it and installing it again but it had no effect. My laptop died again, needed another new motherboard. Early last year I replaced the screen cable on my laptop, but broke the keyboard connector. I got a new motherboard off of eBay, a friend installed it for me, but then it decided to stop working. Got another motherboard off of eBay, and so far it seems alright, apart from it runs quite hot at times (if I'm not wearing trousers it can burn my leg!), so I've bought one of those laptop coolers off of eBay. I'll get around to getting a new laptop one day, but it's still a high spec laptop so trying to get a few more years out of it if possible. Then my router decided to die leaving me without any internet for a couple of weeks. If I promised you some SMD boards can you please send me your address again as I seem to be missing a lot of PMs (I know WGC was one, but for the life of me I can't remember the other 2).

On the plus side, I've had loads of new SMD boards arrive. 3 of them are 1590A versions of ones I already had, the other 3 are 1590A versions of the Proco Rat, STD which is a OCD clone and the MB Boneyard (single channel version, bit of a mission to get it on a small enough board size). Still waiting on some parts to arrive (mostly 9mm pots, but a few components) so I'm not sure if they work yet or not.

I've recently seen a video whereby someone made a SMD stencil using the aluminium from drinks cans. I've had mostly good results from my first go at it, one stencil I left in far too long and destroyed the bit between the pads though. Because it's only about 7'C here, the etching was taking forever, so I decided to have the etching tray on the open door of one of my toaster ovens with the oven switched on, after a while it warmed up the ferric chloride nicely and the etching didn't take too long. I've also seen another video where someone made a stencil out of a OHP transparency sheet, so I've ordered some and going to run them through the laser cutter. In the video the guy had his laser set on engraving, which I'm not sure would be better then cutting, but I'll need to play around with the settings to get them as perfect as possible. I've also seen videos of stencils being made using kapton film, but I can't find anywhere in the UK that sells it. I think my next big purchase is going to be a SMD reflow oven as they seem pretty cheap on eBay now.