RE: [N8VEM-S100:7485] Home brew PCBs

John,

I remember some of my first home made boards... some traces were completely etched through, others had shorts to adjacent traces/pads, then drilling them by hand was a fiasco! Drill bits kept breaking, the holes were all over the place, IC's didn't fit right! All this after spending hours inhaling toxic fumes... Back then, I had to make the mylar film myself... what a waste of time.

I think I could do a much better job at it today, but I know it would take a lot of money to get the right professional equipment and a lot of wasted man hours and material to learn how to use it.
But I am wiser today to know my pleasure and business is to design the board and not go into the production of PCB's.

Like you said, it makes no sense. It's like making glass, would you make your own glass? or just go buy it from a real factory?

Cheers,
Josh

From: mon...@vitasoft.org
To: n8vem...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [N8VEM-S100:7485] Home brew PCBs
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2015 08:44:03 -0700

Agree with Tom, these days it makes no sense to make your own boards. There are so many shops these days these days that do boards in small numbers it’s a “no brainer”. Quality is far better than you would typically do yourself and once a Gurber file is made it is easy to get more boards made.

John

From: n8vem...@googlegroups.com [mailto:n8vem...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tom Lafleur
Sent: Sunday, August 2, 2015 6:32 PM
To: n8vem...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [N8VEM-S100:7482] Home brew PCBs

I given up on local board making, I just let shops in China make them and wait the two to three week to get them via China Post, or 4 to 5 day via DHL

better board, tested, solder mask, silkscreen...

On Sun, Aug 2, 2015 at 5:47 PM, Crusty OMO <crus...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Hi Todd,

KiCad isn't very hard to learn, there's a youtube video tutorial on it. I've heard good things about direct transfer, but never used it. Photo resist is tricky, I've done it a few times and by the time you master it, you will waste several boards.

Cheers,
Josh

Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2015 12:07:48 -0700
From: litte...@gmail.com
To: n8vem...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [N8VEM-S100:7481] Home brew PCBs

I haven't etched a PCB since I was a teenager. Now I have
the need to make some simple boards. They only need to
be single sided using up to eight or so 16-20 pin Dips and
a few caps, LEDs and what not.

I don't need anything fancy as I will use my Laser printer.

Eagle is $169 for the simple version, but this is too much
as I only need to make a few boards.

Whats available that is low cost that others may have used ?

One more question, direct transfer or photo resist ??

Todd

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