3 ms·

Because tomorrow is not almost instantly, except in the land of circuit boards. Your argument doesn’t pass a self-integrity check. You can get boards for a fe

by svnt 4y ago

Because tomorrow is not almost instantly, except in the land of circuit boards. Your argument doesn’t pass a self-integrity check. You can get boards for a few tens of dollars. You won’t get them today. You can get boards tomorrow, or if you happen to be close to a fab and submit your order before lunch maybe same-day. This doesn’t cost tens of dollars.

jeffbee 4y ago
Yeah but neither will a multi-axis robot that can etch and drill and pick and place and solder. It's going to cost an absolute fortune even with fantasy leaps of technology.
- naasking 4y ago
  > Yeah but neither will a multi-axis robot that can etch and drill and pick and place and solder. So simplify: mill instead of etching, which also handles drilling. This needs 3-axis movement, which is all you need to drop solder paste on pads and do pick and place too, you just need a tool changer for each task. Not a trivial project either, but it's been done and certainly not for an absolute fortune. Final step is reflow soldering, and this can be done using just a heated plate [1]. This all seems doable for most hobby sized PCBs. [1] https://www.solderreflowplate.co.uk/ https://www.solderreflowplate.co.uk/
  - xyzzy123 4y ago
    Yes; milling is fiddly but because the forces are so low (and you can reduce the mechanical accuracy needed with depth probing), it's possible to do reliable pcb milling for similar to cost of decent fdm printer. People are doing this today but everything is jank, nobody's repackaged it with prusa-like reliability at hobbyist prices AFAIK. Ideally if you could get v thin copperclad with a substrate that doesn't produce toxic dust, with the right software and jigs you could produce "basic" multilayer boards(1) with 1 "pin aligned" flip and a few manual tool changes for drilling etc. It all seems possible today but has never been packaged nicely and made cheap, I suspect because the market is not big enough. (1) one big issue... the boards produced would be vastly inferior to "real" multilayer boards, would mainly be usable at low frequency, you could get complex layout / routing but they'd suck at high frequency and in several other ways. You would need to relayout / redesign to target a "real" process, which is somewhat undesirable for prototyping.
deleted 4y ago
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r3012 4y ago
I think the main thing is it’s really rare to just have one project in the works anymore. So you buy the 5day turn and work on something else in the interim. If somehow you really blew it in the project planning stage, and you simply must have it now, then I guess it’s kinda a toss up. In those emergencies rarely does cost matter but definitely your geographic location will limit options.
- svnt 4y ago
  I guess this is the point — the workflow is adapted to the lack of immediate feedback. A soft goods shop I know bought everything they need to do prototypes in house. Now they can crush everyone else on delivery schedules and are fully self-determined and therefore also more reliable on those timelines than anyone else. Those two things together draw very lucrative projects. Imagine if you could do the same thing with electronics, moving prototyping entirely in-house and modifying the workflow to match. It would create an entirely new class of shop, and I would bet a lot of interesting changes would flow from that.

by svnt 4y ago

jeffbee 4y ago

Yeah but neither will a multi-axis robot that can etch and drill and pick and place and solder. It's going to cost an absolute fortune even with fantasy leaps of technology.

naasking 4y ago
> Yeah but neither will a multi-axis robot that can etch and drill and pick and place and solder. So simplify: mill instead of etching, which also handles drilling. This needs 3-axis movement, which is all you need to drop solder paste on pads and do pick and place too, you just need a tool changer for each task. Not a trivial project either, but it's been done and certainly not for an absolute fortune. Final step is reflow soldering, and this can be done using just a heated plate [1]. This all seems doable for most hobby sized PCBs. [1] https://www.solderreflowplate.co.uk/ https://www.solderreflowplate.co.uk/
- xyzzy123 4y ago
  Yes; milling is fiddly but because the forces are so low (and you can reduce the mechanical accuracy needed with depth probing), it's possible to do reliable pcb milling for similar to cost of decent fdm printer. People are doing this today but everything is jank, nobody's repackaged it with prusa-like reliability at hobbyist prices AFAIK. Ideally if you could get v thin copperclad with a substrate that doesn't produce toxic dust, with the right software and jigs you could produce "basic" multilayer boards(1) with 1 "pin aligned" flip and a few manual tool changes for drilling etc. It all seems possible today but has never been packaged nicely and made cheap, I suspect because the market is not big enough. (1) one big issue... the boards produced would be vastly inferior to "real" multilayer boards, would mainly be usable at low frequency, you could get complex layout / routing but they'd suck at high frequency and in several other ways. You would need to relayout / redesign to target a "real" process, which is somewhat undesirable for prototyping.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

r3012 4y ago

I think the main thing is it’s really rare to just have one project in the works anymore. So you buy the 5day turn and work on something else in the interim. If somehow you really blew it in the project planning stage, and you simply must have it now, then I guess it’s kinda a toss up. In those emergencies rarely does cost matter but definitely your geographic location will limit options.

svnt 4y ago
I guess this is the point — the workflow is adapted to the lack of immediate feedback. A soft goods shop I know bought everything they need to do prototypes in house. Now they can crush everyone else on delivery schedules and are fully self-determined and therefore also more reliable on those timelines than anyone else. Those two things together draw very lucrative projects. Imagine if you could do the same thing with electronics, moving prototyping entirely in-house and modifying the workflow to match. It would create an entirely new class of shop, and I would bet a lot of interesting changes would flow from that.