Homebrew PCBs

So, LPKF will sell their chemistry separately (they just sent me a price-list) and they too have a 3-stage plus plating-stage process using black-hole techniques. So the new plan is to get the machine from China, and use the chemistry from LPKF.

The manual for the Mini-Contac-RS goes into quite some detail about how long to spend in each bath, what temperatures, the perils of using impure water for washing etc. It actually seems a fairly straightforward process though, and they offer used-chemistry-handling as well. So that seems to sort out the chemical side of things

As far as the hardware, from what I can tell it's basically a pre-built version of Markus Zingg's homebrew station (http://www.0x0000ff.com/tps/) - I doubt it uses the reverse-polarity-plating technique that LPKF boast about, but it's probably good enough for me assuming I don't try and push the limits of aspect ratio...

As far as I know (I only got the consumables pricelist), a Mini-Contac-RS is about $10k. The chinese version (admittedly less capable) is circa $1.5k. The former I have no chance of getting past my wife - the latter is vaguely possible :)

Simon.