Something to think about is a miniboard (a possibly trademarked cheap small board supplier of great reliability, fast speed, and excellent reputation) sells boa

Something to think about is a miniboard (a possibly trademarked cheap small board supplier of great reliability, fast speed, and excellent reputation) sells boards for $17 each shipped the next business day, so printing 250 boards yourself costs 3500 + 250*2= $4000 vs $4250 for professionally made boards. Hmm I donno. 250 boards is a lot of work. I don't think "most" hobbyists are into the hobby that long. For the sake of argument, we'll assume I've ordered that many PCBs as a hobbyist since 1980. How many computers from 1980 are still supported with software updates etc? I could eventually make 250 PCBs in a couple decades, but whats the realistic "clock time" lifespan of this thing? Note that if you're going into serious production rather than the prototype market, you can get a hundred small boards much cheaper than $17 a piece. Another interesting thing to think about is this is a printer... you need a substrate. First thing I thought of it using polished flat marble tiles from home depot. So there are other costs. Also its an ink emitter. Much like ink jet printers which could theoretically print at 5 cents per page IF you use the ink up within 3 months of opening, reality is you try to print a report, realize your cartridge is dead / dried out, install a new $50 cartridge, print your report, and repeat six months later. So ink jets actually cost like $10 per page as a real world on the ground cost. Given the above, its quite possible you could pay $50 for a cartridge and a board every six months in a couple hours, plus $3500 capital cost, or pay maybe $40 for a pro shop to overnight airmail a prototype PCB to you every six months. The TLDR is the financials only work over an extremely narrow range of production rates under very peculiar requirements. Its interesting in the marketplace there are no serious efforts at a full kit for traditional hands on mfgr. There are numerous partial kits that don't quite contain everything. You need a B/W laser printer that is stably calibrated to precise dimensions thats really good at transparencies, a box of transparencies, whatever gear you use to verify calibration (A machinists $5 class 1-2-3 block and some software?). A UV box (basically a giant eprom eraser). Some photo trays and etchants and other chemicals. Some "maker" cultural groups have an intense aversion to hands on, however weird that sounds, and will pay anything or put up with anything, to avoid using their hands, and that's probably the ideal customer for this product given that you can get better results cheaper and faster if you use a traditional PCB process. There is probably a market for someone to sell a complete, vetted, verified photosensitive PCB etching kit.