The machine sold may turn out expensive junk, but is direct conductor deposition really a dead end? I'm not so sure..
ST
>> andrewm wrote:
>> Like most snake oil it will cost as much as
>> suckers are willing to pay.
> Steve wrote:
> Secondly, Andrew, can you be more specific?
It is a method that has been around for a long
time (Silver Nitrate and Absorbic Acid).
Mostly everyone else gives up on it when they
hit its limitations.
The deposited silver has very high resistance.
We are not talking about the resistance diff
between copper and silver here. The individual
particles of silver have "contact" resistance
between each other. It is orders of magnitude
higher resistance than copper.
You can not do ANY circuit that carry a
reasonable amount of power.
The print resolution is actually below what you
can do with TTS and not even on the same
page as photo techniques. They can manage
an SO package. They can't do a TSSOP let
alone a 0.5mm DFN or less.
It's only marginally solderable.
If they where marketing it as "A novel toy
to experiment with and one day this
technique may give useful results" I would
not call it out as snake oil.
It's the fact that they are marketing it as a
turn key solution to all your problems with
PCB making. When in actual fact there
are not problems with peoples home PCB
making techniques.
These things are going to end up as 1K5
paperweights that rob people of hours of
their life in attempt to get useful results.