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Viagrid – PCB template for rapid PCB prototyping with factory-made vias [video]

149 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

JKCalhoun 1y ago
Cool that people are trying new things. And I sure hate waiting for a PCB order to make its way from Hong Kong or Taiwan to Nebraska. I'm not sure I want the trade-off of having to try to fit my existing circuit into those pre-populated vias. Part of the joy of PCB layout is trying to be "optimal". That might be optimal in board size, optimal in the elegance of the trace layouts. I even trying to minimize vias (or not have them altogether). With prefab vias, there will be kludges to work my own vias into those locations. And, honestly, the unused vias will annoy me as well. I'm a sucker for solder masks, silkscreening… I think I am too in love with what I get back from Hong Kong and Taiwan. My "quick prototyping" consists of breadboarding and trashy perf-board mockups.
- sokoloff 1y ago
  I would definitely use this to knock together quick prototypes before ordering boards from China. So many times that I’d happily pay $20 to try a board right fricking now (and I doubt they’ll be $20 all-in). For me, it would replace breadboarding, not replace a final prototype PCB before committing to a first assembly run.
- altairprime 1y ago
  That fitting problem sounds like an excellent job for a computer program! I wonder how many prebuilt PCB layouts would be necessary to fit most hobbyist requests.
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  > I'm a sucker for solder masks, silkscreening… The author of the video has some previous work on solder masks and silk layers. You may want to check the earlier laser manufacturing videos.
LarsDu88 1y ago
It's a shame there aren't US manufacturers who can manufacture custom PCBs as cheaply as JLPCB or PCBWay. These types of lasers might be a stopgap if tariffs make buying from those companies inordinately expensive, however the extreme cost, and the need to do a bunch of cleanup kind of makes me suspect there needs to be another iteration of this tech.
- willis936 1y ago
  OSHpark and sunstone are pretty good. circuithub is serviceable for turnkey assembly (though they might outsource fab overseas, uncertain).
  - all2 1y ago
    I've had problems with Sunstone since they got bought by a company in the Midwest. It may just be corporate integration pains, but still. Specifically we had issues with added graphics not in my GERBERS, and some through hole plating issues.
    - willis936 1y ago
      Yeah that's fair. I don't use them very often. They're in a similar bin as Advanced in that regard.
  - inferiorhuman 1y ago
    Right, but OSH Park competes on quality not price. In fact the other day I came across a reddit post from the owner of OSH Park explaining that e.g. JLC is selling their finished products below his material cost. Add on to that the subsidized shipping and of course they're going to be well below what any US based company can offer. https://old.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9bt5ed/how_come_jlcpcb_be_so_cheap_compared_to_others/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9bt5ed...
    - wrs 1y ago
      That post is 7 years old and JLC has changed a lot since then. It would be interesting to hear his current impressions (presumably they're still doing competitive comparisons).
androng 1y ago
https://toolong.link/v?w=A_IUIyyqw0M&l=en https://toolong.link/v?w=A_IUIyyqw0M&l=en
Teever 1y ago
So glad to see a Stephen Hawes video make the front page. I've been trying for a few years now to get discussion going around his opensource pick and place the LumenPNP[0] His goal of bringing small scale manufacturing down to the workshop / home garage level is really inspiring and is especially relevant in the modern era of tariffs and economic upheaval. To get good at something people need to get hands on experience and it needs to be affordable and relatively easy to use. The kinds of tools that Stephen is promoting make that possible and that's critical if we want people to get good at building things. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LumenPnP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LumenPnP
- Topgamer7 1y ago
  I find his videos very interesting. And I'm always a proponent of open systems and processes. I will say that his presentation style always tilts me a bit. It's his laugh/excitement always seems forced/fake.
  - picture 1y ago
    I completely agree. I can't handle watching his videos for long, for similar reasons. However besides the personal dislike, I think its worthwhile to stop giving so much merit based on advertising "open source" or "effort" or "presentation" etc, because frankly many of these YouTube "makers" and the "maker community" are misguiding a lot of people to make bad designs and waste time and resources. People ought to value correctness and quality a bit more, lest our things become even more enshittified than they are now. One would think that hobbies would be a refuge from disposable low quality shit... yet we get RPi Pico et al (which are arguably getting less shitty but still laughable compared to actually good MCU products) and the people who claim to "out do the big corp" by using a Raspberry Pi with an SDR dongle and saying they achieved $50000 of capability with $60 in parts.. Case in point, the Opulo PNP systems are significantly overpriced and have amateurish mechanical as well as circuit design that are worse than cheaper systems like Pandaplacer in terms of reliability and performance.
    - Johanx64 1y ago
bongodongobob 1y ago
I don't really get this. If I'm doing vias, I'm nearly finished with prototyping. Not to mention routing is a part of that and I don't want to route twice.
- coryrc 1y ago
  I guess you've never used QFN packages nor high-speed digital buses. Also you don't have to reroute, you can build it the same.
  - picture 1y ago
    QFN packages would not benefit much from this (you cannot make much more than a basic breakout board, whose same purpose is better fulfilled with one of those SMD adapters from aliexpress) And regarding high-speed digital buses... are we being genuine here? Just the fact that you cannot have meaningful design over ground return paths with this thing makes any moderately fast digital link unfeasible. Best you'll be able to manage is regular speed SPI (which also does not need a board like this), you can forget about RGMII, ULPI, LVDS, MIPI, SLVS-EC, or anything else for that matter.
    - torusle 1y ago
      this For those who don't know: Vias are not only used to get an electrical connection from one side of the PCB to another. You also need them to keep radiation in check and often to move heat away. With this technique, good luck getting through EMC testing for anything but trivial circuits.
      - coryrc 1y ago
        > You also need them to keep radiation in check and often to move heat away. Hence my post saying vias are useful at all stages of prototyping. > good luck getting through EMC testing for anything but trivial circuits It's for prototyping! Nobody says you can't add more in a board spin.
    - 1y ago
androiddrew 1y ago
I tried the laser etched PCB with the same laser and the same settings, I could not get it to etch through the copper. No clue why. Always impressed with the Opulo guys, but wish it was reproducible.
- bb88 1y ago
  I tried with the same laser and settings as well, and couldn't get it to work either. I think the issue is that if there's a tarnish on the copper, it will work okay. The problem is when you polish the copper. It turns reflective and will not absorb the energy of the laser. A 5W UV laser or a 100W MOPA laser will give better results. I'm thinking about a 200W version for black friday.
- thomasjb 1y ago
  Burning off black spray paint for etch resist worked for me. An extra step but easy enough
the__alchemist 1y ago
Ahhhh. Another one. I'm convinced there is not a single acronym/technical short word I pronounce [in my head] the same way as other people. C'est la Via.
- Retr0id 1y ago
  ... how were you pronouncing PCB?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - the__alchemist 1y ago
    You jest, but given this trend, I should have been expecting Pick-Buh or something!
    - coryrc 1y ago
      It took Brian_K_White's reply before I figured you were talking about "via" and not "PCB" :) (because you put "acronym" before "/short word")
- Brian_K_White 1y ago
  I say "I went vi-ya this route." Yet I do say vee-ya for the holes in pcbs. So I say the same word both ways at different times. And I guess I say route both ways at different times too now that I mention it.
  - OJFord 1y ago
    If not Canadian, then I'd guess American with electronics influence from someone (Commonwealthian) who'd always say 'vee', EEVBlog say. (Fwiw route can be correctly pronounced differently in different circumstances: BrE is 'follow that [root] to the woodshop and [rowt] a nice profile on this piece'.)
grogenaut 1y ago
Is there a way you could do this with a lot of vias in a grid to make it more flexible and either lasering around the vias in a tight circle to disconnect them or just straight up punching them out?
ycui1986 1y ago
with modern Chinese manufacturing, you get 2-layer PCB with via and soldermask gorgeously made for $4 in 24 hours (actually samples can even be free in China). why bother make PCB at home with all the nasty chemicals or CNC ?
- phaker 1y ago
  1. It's a hobby in your own right. The nasty is not that bad, back in the day the annoying thing was how fiddly it was but the community thought of better ways like etching with a sponge. You can get better boards made online but that applies to all hobbies. 2. In most of US/EU you get them for $5 in up to _two weeks_, or in two days for $5+$2X or more which adds up quicklyand can be more than the rest of the project. Even next day shipping loses out badly to making it yourself in ~30 minutes, turns into two days delay unless you're lucky to have an idea in the morning and time to work on it in the next afternoon, a lot of the time i see people bodging things i'd make another board for because it's just easier.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- taf2 1y ago
  It might take 24 hours to make the board but shipping is at least another week of wait time. The dream is for a 3d printer like setup that sits on the desk and cranks out fully assembled multilayer boards
sodikidos 1y ago
[dead]
Animats 1y ago
They also have a pick and place machine.[1] It's a lot like the defunct Liteplacer.[2] It seems to be a kit, not a pre-assembled unit. It's hard to tell from the documentation. It looks a bit flimsy for the rigidity required. Same problem as the Liteplacer. To download the "white paper", you have to go through the onboarding funnel and agree to being spammed, which is always annoying. The frustrating thing about prototyping pick and place and solder paste machines is that production people want speed, which costs. The prototype-only market isn't big enough. (Has the low-cost reflow oven situation improved? The low-end ones had hot spots that would scorch a board.) Compare this Neoden line of products.[3] No idea if these are any good. US$3000 for pick and place. That looks like a much more useful product than the Opulo machine. It can work with a wider range of part sizes; not everything has to be on an 8mm tape. (The problem with plated-through holes, of which "vias" are a subset, is that they require a number of chemical baths which aren't worth setting up for a one-off.) [1] https://www.opulo.io/products/lumenpnp https://www.opulo.io/products/lumenpnp [2] https://www.liteplacer.com/ https://www.liteplacer.com/ [3] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/SMT-PCB-Production-Line-Automatic-Small_1601611061192.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/SMT-PCB-Production-Li...
sschueller 1y ago
Cool concept but as someone that makes quite a few PCBs a year I don't see any use of this for me personally. Once you get to a certain component size and layer count, home making PCBs doesn't make any more sense. I do still order only PCB and solder stencil initially to hand solder and test boards before PCBA but by that time I have tested most on breadboards and fitted the PCB in CAD to wherever it will go. While waiting the 1-2 weeks for the boards and components I usually work on the firmware.
- tliltocatl 1y ago
  Once the Chinese close the border and the domestic fabs raise their prices it will be very useful.
  - wronex 1y ago
    On that note, my last PCBway order took four weeks to arrive. Dunno if it was a random fluke, but it sure came with more border regulations incantations attached to the box than usual.
    - tliltocatl 1y ago
      Just had to quickly find replacement for all NXP stuff we were using on a prototype board already sent to assembly. Good that we aren't using their MCU, only some discretes. And good that we git a proper B2B contact so it was polite warning rather than being ghosted like PCBway did to some hobbyists out there.
  - sschueller 1y ago
    Switzerland has a free trade agreement with China so that is highly unlikely to happen even with US and EU pressure.
  - estimator7292 1y ago
    Have you tried getting something tabbed domestically? I was just given a quote of $20k for ten boards about the size of a phone. The other domestic fab I tried dicked me around for three weeks before I got a quote. $5k this time. PCBway wants $500
Western0 1y ago
ok, please make a example. I need zx spectrum or commodore or macintosh show me how You can to do this.

149 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

Cool that people are trying new things. And I sure hate waiting for a PCB order to make its way from Hong Kong or Taiwan to Nebraska. I'm not sure I want the trade-off of having to try to fit my existing circuit into those pre-populated vias. Part of the joy of PCB layout is trying to be "optimal". That might be optimal in board size, optimal in the elegance of the trace layouts. I even trying to minimize vias (or not have them altogether). With prefab vias, there will be kludges to work my own vias into those locations. And, honestly, the unused vias will annoy me as well. I'm a sucker for solder masks, silkscreening… I think I am too in love with what I get back from Hong Kong and Taiwan. My "quick prototyping" consists of breadboarding and trashy perf-board mockups.

sokoloff 1y ago
I would definitely use this to knock together quick prototypes before ordering boards from China. So many times that I’d happily pay $20 to try a board right fricking now (and I doubt they’ll be $20 all-in). For me, it would replace breadboarding, not replace a final prototype PCB before committing to a first assembly run.
altairprime 1y ago
That fitting problem sounds like an excellent job for a computer program! I wonder how many prebuilt PCB layouts would be necessary to fit most hobbyist requests.
marcosdumay 1y ago
> I'm a sucker for solder masks, silkscreening… The author of the video has some previous work on solder masks and silk layers. You may want to check the earlier laser manufacturing videos.

LarsDu88 1y ago

It's a shame there aren't US manufacturers who can manufacture custom PCBs as cheaply as JLPCB or PCBWay. These types of lasers might be a stopgap if tariffs make buying from those companies inordinately expensive, however the extreme cost, and the need to do a bunch of cleanup kind of makes me suspect there needs to be another iteration of this tech.

willis936 1y ago
OSHpark and sunstone are pretty good. circuithub is serviceable for turnkey assembly (though they might outsource fab overseas, uncertain).
- all2 1y ago
  I've had problems with Sunstone since they got bought by a company in the Midwest. It may just be corporate integration pains, but still. Specifically we had issues with added graphics not in my GERBERS, and some through hole plating issues.
  - willis936 1y ago
    Yeah that's fair. I don't use them very often. They're in a similar bin as Advanced in that regard.
- inferiorhuman 1y ago
  Right, but OSH Park competes on quality not price. In fact the other day I came across a reddit post from the owner of OSH Park explaining that e.g. JLC is selling their finished products below his material cost. Add on to that the subsidized shipping and of course they're going to be well below what any US based company can offer. https://old.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9bt5ed/how_come_jlcpcb_be_so_cheap_compared_to_others/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9bt5ed...
  - wrs 1y ago
    That post is 7 years old and JLC has changed a lot since then. It would be interesting to hear his current impressions (presumably they're still doing competitive comparisons).

androng 1y ago

https://toolong.link/v?w=A_IUIyyqw0M&l=en https://toolong.link/v?w=A_IUIyyqw0M&l=en

Teever 1y ago

So glad to see a Stephen Hawes video make the front page. I've been trying for a few years now to get discussion going around his opensource pick and place the LumenPNP[0] His goal of bringing small scale manufacturing down to the workshop / home garage level is really inspiring and is especially relevant in the modern era of tariffs and economic upheaval. To get good at something people need to get hands on experience and it needs to be affordable and relatively easy to use. The kinds of tools that Stephen is promoting make that possible and that's critical if we want people to get good at building things. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LumenPnP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LumenPnP

Topgamer7 1y ago
I find his videos very interesting. And I'm always a proponent of open systems and processes. I will say that his presentation style always tilts me a bit. It's his laugh/excitement always seems forced/fake.
- picture 1y ago
  I completely agree. I can't handle watching his videos for long, for similar reasons. However besides the personal dislike, I think its worthwhile to stop giving so much merit based on advertising "open source" or "effort" or "presentation" etc, because frankly many of these YouTube "makers" and the "maker community" are misguiding a lot of people to make bad designs and waste time and resources. People ought to value correctness and quality a bit more, lest our things become even more enshittified than they are now. One would think that hobbies would be a refuge from disposable low quality shit... yet we get RPi Pico et al (which are arguably getting less shitty but still laughable compared to actually good MCU products) and the people who claim to "out do the big corp" by using a Raspberry Pi with an SDR dongle and saying they achieved $50000 of capability with $60 in parts.. Case in point, the Opulo PNP systems are significantly overpriced and have amateurish mechanical as well as circuit design that are worse than cheaper systems like Pandaplacer in terms of reliability and performance.
  - Johanx64 1y ago

bongodongobob 1y ago

I don't really get this. If I'm doing vias, I'm nearly finished with prototyping. Not to mention routing is a part of that and I don't want to route twice.

coryrc 1y ago
I guess you've never used QFN packages nor high-speed digital buses. Also you don't have to reroute, you can build it the same.
- picture 1y ago
  QFN packages would not benefit much from this (you cannot make much more than a basic breakout board, whose same purpose is better fulfilled with one of those SMD adapters from aliexpress) And regarding high-speed digital buses... are we being genuine here? Just the fact that you cannot have meaningful design over ground return paths with this thing makes any moderately fast digital link unfeasible. Best you'll be able to manage is regular speed SPI (which also does not need a board like this), you can forget about RGMII, ULPI, LVDS, MIPI, SLVS-EC, or anything else for that matter.
  - torusle 1y ago
    this For those who don't know: Vias are not only used to get an electrical connection from one side of the PCB to another. You also need them to keep radiation in check and often to move heat away. With this technique, good luck getting through EMC testing for anything but trivial circuits.
    - coryrc 1y ago
      > You also need them to keep radiation in check and often to move heat away. Hence my post saying vias are useful at all stages of prototyping. > good luck getting through EMC testing for anything but trivial circuits It's for prototyping! Nobody says you can't add more in a board spin.
  - 1y ago

androiddrew 1y ago

I tried the laser etched PCB with the same laser and the same settings, I could not get it to etch through the copper. No clue why. Always impressed with the Opulo guys, but wish it was reproducible.

bb88 1y ago
I tried with the same laser and settings as well, and couldn't get it to work either. I think the issue is that if there's a tarnish on the copper, it will work okay. The problem is when you polish the copper. It turns reflective and will not absorb the energy of the laser. A 5W UV laser or a 100W MOPA laser will give better results. I'm thinking about a 200W version for black friday.
thomasjb 1y ago
Burning off black spray paint for etch resist worked for me. An extra step but easy enough

the__alchemist 1y ago

Ahhhh. Another one. I'm convinced there is not a single acronym/technical short word I pronounce [in my head] the same way as other people. C'est la Via.

Retr0id 1y ago
... how were you pronouncing PCB?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- the__alchemist 1y ago
  You jest, but given this trend, I should have been expecting Pick-Buh or something!
  - coryrc 1y ago
    It took Brian_K_White's reply before I figured you were talking about "via" and not "PCB" :) (because you put "acronym" before "/short word")
Brian_K_White 1y ago
I say "I went vi-ya this route." Yet I do say vee-ya for the holes in pcbs. So I say the same word both ways at different times. And I guess I say route both ways at different times too now that I mention it.
- OJFord 1y ago
  If not Canadian, then I'd guess American with electronics influence from someone (Commonwealthian) who'd always say 'vee', EEVBlog say. (Fwiw route can be correctly pronounced differently in different circumstances: BrE is 'follow that [root] to the woodshop and [rowt] a nice profile on this piece'.)

grogenaut 1y ago

Is there a way you could do this with a lot of vias in a grid to make it more flexible and either lasering around the vias in a tight circle to disconnect them or just straight up punching them out?

ycui1986 1y ago

with modern Chinese manufacturing, you get 2-layer PCB with via and soldermask gorgeously made for $4 in 24 hours (actually samples can even be free in China). why bother make PCB at home with all the nasty chemicals or CNC ?

phaker 1y ago
1. It's a hobby in your own right. The nasty is not that bad, back in the day the annoying thing was how fiddly it was but the community thought of better ways like etching with a sponge. You can get better boards made online but that applies to all hobbies. 2. In most of US/EU you get them for $5 in up to _two weeks_, or in two days for $5+$2X or more which adds up quicklyand can be more than the rest of the project. Even next day shipping loses out badly to making it yourself in ~30 minutes, turns into two days delay unless you're lucky to have an idea in the morning and time to work on it in the next afternoon, a lot of the time i see people bodging things i'd make another board for because it's just easier.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
taf2 1y ago
It might take 24 hours to make the board but shipping is at least another week of wait time. The dream is for a 3d printer like setup that sits on the desk and cranks out fully assembled multilayer boards

sodikidos 1y ago

[dead]

Animats 1y ago

They also have a pick and place machine.[1] It's a lot like the defunct Liteplacer.[2] It seems to be a kit, not a pre-assembled unit. It's hard to tell from the documentation. It looks a bit flimsy for the rigidity required. Same problem as the Liteplacer. To download the "white paper", you have to go through the onboarding funnel and agree to being spammed, which is always annoying. The frustrating thing about prototyping pick and place and solder paste machines is that production people want speed, which costs. The prototype-only market isn't big enough. (Has the low-cost reflow oven situation improved? The low-end ones had hot spots that would scorch a board.) Compare this Neoden line of products.[3] No idea if these are any good. US$3000 for pick and place. That looks like a much more useful product than the Opulo machine. It can work with a wider range of part sizes; not everything has to be on an 8mm tape. (The problem with plated-through holes, of which "vias" are a subset, is that they require a number of chemical baths which aren't worth setting up for a one-off.) [1] https://www.opulo.io/products/lumenpnp https://www.opulo.io/products/lumenpnp [2] https://www.liteplacer.com/ https://www.liteplacer.com/ [3] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/SMT-PCB-Production-Line-Automatic-Small_1601611061192.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/SMT-PCB-Production-Li...

sschueller 1y ago

Cool concept but as someone that makes quite a few PCBs a year I don't see any use of this for me personally. Once you get to a certain component size and layer count, home making PCBs doesn't make any more sense. I do still order only PCB and solder stencil initially to hand solder and test boards before PCBA but by that time I have tested most on breadboards and fitted the PCB in CAD to wherever it will go. While waiting the 1-2 weeks for the boards and components I usually work on the firmware.

tliltocatl 1y ago
Once the Chinese close the border and the domestic fabs raise their prices it will be very useful.
- wronex 1y ago
  On that note, my last PCBway order took four weeks to arrive. Dunno if it was a random fluke, but it sure came with more border regulations incantations attached to the box than usual.
  - tliltocatl 1y ago
    Just had to quickly find replacement for all NXP stuff we were using on a prototype board already sent to assembly. Good that we aren't using their MCU, only some discretes. And good that we git a proper B2B contact so it was polite warning rather than being ghosted like PCBway did to some hobbyists out there.
- sschueller 1y ago
  Switzerland has a free trade agreement with China so that is highly unlikely to happen even with US and EU pressure.
- estimator7292 1y ago
  Have you tried getting something tabbed domestically? I was just given a quote of $20k for ten boards about the size of a phone. The other domestic fab I tried dicked me around for three weeks before I got a quote. $5k this time. PCBway wants $500

Western0 1y ago

ok, please make a example. I need zx spectrum or commodore or macintosh show me how You can to do this.