ballendo wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Can I ask a really dumb question?
>
> When I visit my board house (they're local and let me "tour" as I
> wish; a 900x certified facility) I see ALL their plating and etching
> baths using vertical board holders closely spaced in large tanks.
>
> No slanted walls, No bubbles. But here IS good recirculation of the
> etchant. (They do acid etching, AIRC)
>
> If it works for them; why doesn't it work for us?
>
How many tens of thousands of dollars did they pay for their equipment? How
much does it cost per month to maintain?
Do you build a giant conveyor oven to cook a 50 cent snack? That is what the
big food making companies use, why are you so silly and still using an old
fashion oven? What makes sense on a commercial scale is almost never the right
answer on an individual one. Even when it is it's not because 'that's what they
do' but because it's the right thing to do even on a small scale.
>
> Nothing special about it. Again boards/panels held vertically, with
LOL, says you, maybe. How many years did it take them to evolve it into what
you see? How much money did it take to evolve it into something good enough to
fool you into thinking it's simple? Not that it's impossible to do, but you
don't appear to have asked yourself any questions about time, effort, and
development cost. Is it really easy, or does it just look easy to you because
you have no idea of how difficult or easy it is? Of course it seems easy,
seeing a whole made unit. But actually you have no real idea if it's easy or
not from that.
See it all the time in RC helis. Unbelievable how many people throw away a
grand or two because it looks easy, without first stopping to think that maybe
it's not as easy as someone with years of practice makes it look..
Slanted walls, bubbles? Those are something especially hard or unusual? You
are worried about some trivial things I think.. Just try building that rotating
tube yourself for educational purposes and see how easy it is.
Fact is that a slanted plate bubble tank, brought up to roughly as effective,
and being several times easier to build, would be a far better, higher end
result technology item than a spray system. You're just not recognizing a
potentially superior system when you're reading about it. Actively pumped can
always be faster, but if the speed margin isn't 4x or better the complexity will
never pay off for a home user. Even that likely wouldn't be enough, do most
people care if the board etches in 10 minutes or 2 minutes, long as it's not a
half hour?
Alan