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> Then once you have a design you have one of the big players manufacture it in the traditional manner. Why? Assuming this is ignoring a good chunk of individu
by TeMPOraL 2y ago
> Then once you have a design you have one of the big players manufacture it in the traditional manner.
Why? Assuming this is ignoring a good chunk of individual interest. It's similar to people mentioning ordering PCBs instead of making your own: sure, making a thousand copies of a PCB is now cheap enough on the margin to be accessible. But what about making five? Or just one?
Not every human sees a hobby as an investment into business. Not everyone does projects with a sellable product in mind. Many just want to test their ideas, have fun, scratch their own itch, build something so it exists, and not to sell it.
The primary value of a home fab to me would be to enable fabbing a single task-specific chip (or a tiny amount of them) for any random need I have, whenever it occurs.
- kragen 2y agoEvery other YouTube video I watch tells me two or three times that Their Sponsor JLCPCB (or, equivalently, their competitor PCBWay) will fabricate five copies of your PCB for US$10 and ship them to you in a week, though the non-promotional price seems to be more like US$80. Tiny Tapeout, MOSIS, and CMP do similar things for chips, at a much higher cost and longer timescale.
- zokier 2y ago> It's similar to people mentioning ordering PCBs instead of making your own: sure, making a thousand copies of a PCB is now cheap enough on the margin to be accessible. But what about making five? Or just one? For example JLCPCB is currently offering 5 PCBs (2L, 100x100mm) for $2 + $1.52 shipping. That's why people are saying that making your own PCBs is not economical.