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Comment by fest | Hacker News Reader

I have experimented with various at-home PCB production techniques: engraving, toner transfer, UV litography. The main limitation for all of these is fine pitch parts (less than 0.5mm) and plated holes (vias and through holes). The fine pitch part can be solved relatively easily (have a better mask for litography, have a finer engraving bit) but I am not aware of easy solutions for plating holes.

I have settled on Chinese board houses- you get very good PCBs with plated holes, soldermask and silkscreen- for 50USD and two weeks in total.

I have spent countless hours debugging copper whiskers shorting traces together- something which I have only seen on self-made PCB.

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> for 50USD

dirtypcbs.com charges $12 for 10 PCBs (50x50mm), and the quality is fantastic. ENIG coating is more expensive, but HASL is fine as well. I haven't really tried any other houses, but DirtyPCBs have been great for me.

> and two weeks in total.

The only problem for me is that they take three weeks (as with everything from China that's shipped to Greece), which is way too long for a prototype that's usually then iterated upon :(

Having a machine that could make prototype PCBs (which I would then probably throw away) would be as much of a game-changer as my 3D printer is for prototyping. I'd try etching my own, but holes will be a problem, as I don't have one of those vertical drills.

DHL shipping is another 20-25USD + VAT on import makes it closer to 50. But very cheap, anyway.

Drilling itself is not the problem- just buy a nice set of drills with larger diameter shank and a small vertical drilling machine (Proxxon makes solid tools for that).

The problem is connecting both sides of the hole together- you'll have to place vias where you can solder both sides, always think about which side do your connectors go and spend a lot of time soldering.

On the other hand, it makes you gravitate towards SMD parts more :)

Also, my first boards had a lot of fuckups unrelated to production (mostly, wrong connections, incorrect pinouts etc).

As I gained more experience, the boards started to work with less revisions (usually the minimum functionality works on the first try, with some more advanced aspects not working as good as required) . That way, I can work on multiple designs in parallel (e. g. laying out the next board or programming the previous one while waiting for next board to arrive).

> DHL shipping is another 20-25USD + VAT on import makes it closer to 50.

I pay $14 total, shipping is free and customs here doesn't bother with small packages.

> just buy a nice set of drills with larger diameter shank and a small vertical drilling machine

"X is not a problem, just buy a machine that does it" can be applied to everything. I don't want to spend that much money/don't have that much time/space.

> The problem is connecting both sides of the hole together

Yeah, vias are going to be a royal pain. For through-hole vias where components go, I can just apply enough solder so that it touches both sides.

> On the other hand, it makes you gravitate towards SMD parts more

SMD parts are fantastic and I use them as much as I can, but they aren't always feasible :/ (Think DC connectors, SMT antennas, etc).

> As I gained more experience, the boards started to work with less revisions

Definitely, but my problem is that I always find something I can improve, even if the board works...

> shipping is free

That's why you get them in 3 weeks as opposed to 2 ;>

With free shipping from DirtyPCBs my boards arrive to Latvia in ~5 weeks since order, so you should consider yourself luckier than you currently do :)

Ah, yes, that's very possible. For Europe, I hear that AISLER is competitive, and you get ENIG coating by default and DHL shipping, so it's fast.

Can't agree more. We have an othermill that's come in handy mostly for intermediate boards that involve mashing together other already made boards. We can get boards back from OSH in a week. We even experimented with a "24 hour" turn around service that skips the soldermask.

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