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

I guess I'm an Oldie.

I spent 12 years trying to teach companies such as IBM, HP, Sperry Univac, Burroughs, and countless board shops how to build PCBs. There were technical successes (Sperry in Bristol, TN, and HP in Garden of the Gods, CO were memorable) and failures (IBM, Austin, TX), but in the end economics trumped technology - except in the cases of the Mafia shops that were laundering money - and essentially all PCB production has moved to SE Asia.

So I have a bit of experience making circuit boards.

For the most part I keep quiet unless the poster is really going to waste a lot of time on something that doesn't stand a chance of working. So if someone wants to try electro, mechanical milling, or some other off-the-wall process, I can sometimes point out the pitfalls that they will encounter, but I would never suggest that it can't be done.

When a newspaper reporter asked Thomas Edison what progress he had made in developing his electric light after two years of work, he is said to have replied something like, "Well, I know about a thousand things that don't work." Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

So for you Newbies who what to try something different - go for it. But listen to the consul of the Oldies - we've been there and generally have had more failures than successes. We don't want to dampen you enthusiasm, but just want to make you aware of what has gone before. There's no need to repeat historical failures.

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