I agree with what Dave stated. The economics just are not there for
me. I can buy a bunch of PCB stock on Ebay very cheap. I can print
a lot of layouts on a laser printer very cheap. The Ferric chloride
for etching is cheap, the ironing process is cheap, drilling the
holes is cheap. All of the above is also pretty easy once you get
the hang of it - much easier than doing your own PCB design and
electronics design which brings me to the real reason why!!!
Being green about electronics, most of my designs do not work first
time out. Most of the stuff I have been designing does not lend
itself well to breadboarding or even perf boards. So, I do the best
I can in the design, layout the circuit, and make the PCBs myself.
If things go as usual, I may make the same board 3 or 4 times in one
day and that is very key for me. I don't like waiting 1 week, 2
weeks, 3 weeks, etc. for something I can do right now.
So, really, there are two primary advantages to making PCBs at home;
Economics and Instant gratification :-)
Chris
--- In
Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Mucha" <dave_mucha@...>
wrote:
>
>
> >
> > Speaking of old-timers, I used to etch my own circuit boards
back in
> the 60s
> > when I was a teen-ager. I was a little surprised to see so many
> people still
> > doing it these days with services like ExpressPCB available.
>
> Services like Express are nice, but, if you want to make a small
power
> supply, screw terminals, regulator, cap, diodes, resistors... it
> costs $20.00 for each board.
>
> then you want to make a PWM to analog converter, couple resistors,
> couple caps and and an op-amp. Another $20.00
>
> but, since each board is $20 and you have to order 3 boards, the
cost
> is now $120.00 for those two boards.
>
> I don't know about you, but I can make two boards in an hour and
save
> myself the $100 on the simple projects.
>
> Dave
>