removing backing from dry film

[coppercone2]

How the hell do you remove backing from dry film? The green one.


The blue one I use 2 pieces of tape and it comes apart easily (even with really old blue film). The green solder resist however resists the tape pull apart trick.I tried packaging tape and kapton tape.

Is there some trick to it? Normally I have to really mangle a corner and dig in there with a pick to get a piece I can grip.


Its mad annoying. Some kinda super sticky tape ? its just not strong enough.

[Phil1977]

Some kinda super sticky tape ?

I have no experience with this specific dry film, but if packaging and kapton tape are not strong enough then this double sided clear acrylic tape may help. I repeatedly experienced it being stronger than the surface it´s glueing to.

[coppercone2]

I found a semi-clean method, I spent a while with some very fine diamonds to fix one of my tweezers under magnification. It took a while but I got it strait and pointy. It seems that I can get it hooked on the gel to lift it a little.


Then the trick is to get alumina tweezers, and use them to grab the clear protective layer. It seems to be the only tweezers that grips it. I made sure they close good.

From this point I can get enough grip on it with a gloved hand after lifting it a little bit to pull it apart.


I noticed that with this film, the tape bearly grabs it. I dunno if the dry film solder resist film has a different protector that is more slippery or something, it seems more substantial then the blue etch film's protector.


With this method I only mess up maybe 1/2 a square CM of material. Just the problem is, you are supposed to do this in a dark room... I find it hard to work on it with my LED color light. I need like a red or yellow LED spot light for doing this operation. The lights I have are OK for like assembling it once you can handle it with your hands, but it sucks for working with tweezers.