Coating DIY PCB's (EE Question)

[SavannahLion]

As soon as I can figure out where my wife hid my blank plates, I'll be etching.... as soon as I get the printer working again.... and figure out where wifie put my new ink. 

To save most people the trouble, if you don't know what a conformal coating is, you can stop reading and move on. I'm not trying to be insulting, I'm just trying to save you five minutes of your life for a more interesting topic.

I wanted to see if I could get the protecting finishes you see a lot of PCB fab houses do and figured the closest a hobbyist myself would have access to is the conformal coating sprays from places like Mouser. Not quite in the same vein as a solder mask but well you work with what you can get I guess. 

In fact, Mouser is the only place I've found that has the spray cans (cheapest running little over $15 a pop). The rest of my searches turn up Alibaba or related industrial sites, useless when the minimum purchase is higher than my mortgage (I'm lying but it is quite a bit for a hobbyist).

Does any of the EE guys (& gals if one should exist) here actually use conformal coatings and, if so, where do you get it from?

On a same note, I found a couple of places where some kind of straight foward paint is used. For example:

PEBEO is suggested (Look in the comments section)
Clearcoat
Krylon at this place though that has less to do with protecting the copper and more to do with matching his auto.

I just have to wonder if it makes sense to shell out $15 for conformal coatings at the hobbyist level when a $5 can of clear acrylic does a decent job of it. In fact, IIRC, TESTERS used to sell a line of transparent enamels in some really neat colors. I think I have an unused can of transparent metallic blue and transparent gray. Their website only shows six transparent colors. I suppose I can break out my old hobby spray gun for the Acrylics. Don't know how much it is for their cans but I can't imagine much savings over the Mouser offering. Or I suppose I can steal my wife/daughter's nail polish and use those. Old modeling trick because  have way more color choices for their stinking nails.

Point is,  I'm just looking to prevent my traces from tarnishing.

I also looked into other ideas such as:

Using my soldering iron and solder to coat the traces in solder. I tried it on a junk board and the results were... uneven. It works but it's just kind of ugly.

Nickel plating. Either from a kit (expensive) or as DIY (Apparently some key chemicals are now DEA I listed).

Solder pot. I have little kids that like to watch me solder. A solder pot is a nightmare waiting to happen. Maybe in a few years when they're a little older :\

[HaRuMaN]

Solder pot...  I didn't even know that existed until I read this thread.  May be useful to me, but I too have a little one that likes to "help" me solder...

[Ken Layton]

MCM Electronics sells conformal coatings:

http://electronics.mcmelectronics.com/search?w=conformal%20coating

[lilshawn]

i would just go ahead and buy conformal coating, if you have a small amout of boards to do it'll last you forever.

i also just insulate my boards with hot glue too. 

[SavannahLion]

Thanks guys...

i also just insulate my boards with hot glue too. 

Um... this isn't really about insulating my PCB, it's more about protecting it from general moisture and what not. Where my PCB is going to be mounted I don't really want to have to take it apart again for maintenance (catastrophic repair is another matter). I figure if I can do what I can to give the board a longer life, I figure it might be worth looking into.

But yeah, I've done that before too. I did that when I transplanted part of the power supply into the laptop. Seems to work OK, but if I recall correctly the inventor of the stuff specifically stated that's not what he intended the glue to be used for.