can tufnol or clear acrylic be used for the board?

[PositiveNegativeMan]

I was using FR4 / G10 for turret and eyelet boards. Then I ran out of money, and took to recycling PCBs from discarded computers. Rip the components off, pass over with a sander to be rid of the copper and hey prest, one board. If it needed to be thicker I would glue two together.

They have worked ok but the process is messy (and there's that fingers issue with the sander) so I was curious whether clear acrylic is ok to use since I can get sheet offcuts of that from work for free. (or clear polycarbonate or PTFE, or Tufnol)

[jrfrond]

Acrylic is a thermoplastic and in my opinion, not dimensionally stable enough and too fragile to use as a circuit board. It also will not withstand soldering heat.

[Enzo]

Right, as soon as you try to solder to your turret, it will melt itself out of its hole.

[dai h.]

AFAIK(read) Tufnol is a British trade name for common insulating material(paper phenolic, cloth phenolic, etc. which comes in different grades (types?) such as "Swan", "Kite" IIRC) so if the material is Tufnol, then I'd think it would be okay (unless there is some Tufnol not suited to use as board material).

[Chuck H]

When I lived in San Jose, Ca. I had access to a lot of fabrication shops. Not the case anymore, but you CAN find stuff on line for similar prices. I bought a four foot by four foot sheet of 1/16" G10 for US $68.00. I'm still making circuit boards off it five years later. Figure it this way, if the average eyelet board is 2.75"X16" then a four by four sheet of G10 is good for about fourty eight or fifty boards. That's an average of a buck fourty a board for the substrate. I'm just not having a problem with that. I'm not about to start laminating salvaged parts for that price tag.

Chuck

[Gtr_tech]

There's a guy out here who makes eyelet boards out of formica scraps from the cabinet shop. He says it works great....
I've used "veroboard" for a couple of my own "junkbox" builds. I just etched off the copper pads and drilled the holes for teh eyelets. The OP could do the same with recycling boards as long as they're single sided and not thru-plated.