Homebrew UV PCBs - an alternative method.

[ppppenguin]

If you're at the sort of complexity that needs plated through holes and/or multilayer then forget about DIY. It might be theoretically possible but a substantial investment in time and equipment. There are numerous companies that will do prototype quantities at reasonable prices.

[Nick]

I use PCBway - http://www.pcbway.com/

   
   

[ppppenguin]

Amazing prices. For double sided PTH with solder mask and silk screen it's just $10 for 10 off under 100mm square boards. That seems to be $10 for all 10, not $10 each which in itself wouldn't be terribly expensive.

[Mike Watterson]

Yes, you need to feel it's fun to make your own as the bare board, chemicals etc are not cheap and results are very poor compared to the Chinese vendors.
There is a PCB place near me, been in business for maybe 30 years. They now partner with a place in Eastern Europe for medium volume and a Chinese company for prototypes and large volume. As they have regular shipping from China, it's about 2 or 3 weeks faster than dealing direct with ordinary China mail, but more expensive.
They may still do something in house as they supplied me with blank 0.8mm PCB for the mill in 2008.

Thick accurate solder resist hugely helps with alignment to solder SMT ICs. I use a regular size wedge bit, pre-tin board and then simply reflow three to four pins at a time with dry tip.
For SMT transistors, caps, resistors (work well on stripboard) I use very fine solder and regular wedge tip.

[Nick]

The board in my previous posting were EXPENSIVE !!!

I added black solder resist and ENIG plating.

That pushed the price for 10 boards up to about USD 12 !!!

However, I also elected to pay USD 25 to have the boards DHL shipped back to the UK - whilst this is a significant uplift for 10 boards, I was having batches of 50 at a time made, so the uplift was tiny.

Note that having 20 or 30 boards made at a time is not that much more than 10.

EDIT: Should have added that quality is pretty good and that the boards above were for a "statistical regulator" HV project, first mooted by Morgan Jones in the 4th ed. of his seminal work, "Valve Amplifiers". In the end, I distributed about 200 of those kits, including giving one to the man himself (MJ) at an Audio Talk gathering in Owston. Boards are shipped vacuum-packed to ensure they arrive nice & dry (important if you are putting them into a IR oven).

Not made a board myself for many years now. Anyone want to buy a really good, hardly used, bubble tank?

[Mike Watterson]

Not made a board myself for many years now. Anyone want to buy a really good, hardly used, bubble tank?

[Aerodyne]

A fascinating thread, thanks, David. We all have our own pet ways of working. One of my variations is never to remove the resist from the etched boards as I find that soldering is assisted by its presence and removing it necessitates rapid tin plating or the copper tarnishes, making soldering a problem.
Tony

[Nick]

Another stupidly cheap and good PCB prototype manufacturer - https://www.elecrow.com/services/pcb-prototyping.html

I have friends who have used them and speak very highly of the quality...

[ppppenguin]

At those prices who would want to fiddle around with light boxes and wet chemistry.

[Nick]

At those prices who would want to fiddle around with light boxes and wet chemistry.

Specifically, the prices for 4-layer boards are so cheap, that I'll be submitting some of those... generally, anything over 2-layer is a stupidly expensive price, but USD 6 for a 10cm x 10cm 4-layer board (actually 5 boards for USD 30)?

Mad pricing.