Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

Okay, as you all know I am far from experienced with PCB making. I
have gone through a variety of trials with the toner transfer method
and can appreciate it. I can somewhat see it's limitations with
regard to how small of a trace I could do using this process.
However, if I ever need more detail, I could do the photoresist
process. The chemicals work good and efficient, all around, etching
works very good.

Now about 6 months ago, I was wanting to do isolation milling as I
believed it to be better. However, I am pretty much now in the
belief trying isolation milling will not show any advantages over
what I am doing now. I seriously doubt it would be faster than
chemical etching. I don't think the tool bits would last very long,
so I would guess that the tooling costs would negate the costs of
the chemicals. Even though you would be cutting with a very small
diameter pointed tool, I don't think you could get better results
(finer pitches and traces) using a milling process.

Is there something that I am not seeing in that process that would
give it advantages over chemical etching?

Thanks guys

Chris