[alphabetter]

It's not unknown for people to hand-draw PCBs with permanent markers in much the way you describe. It's not a new idea, but with 3D printers being common these days, it's nice to remind people of this approach to PCB manufacture.

Having made a few PCBs at home, my experience is the etching if the weak link. It's hard to get consistent, high quality traces - particularly if there is any kind of high density layout.

With some effort you can to double sided PCBs using this kind of technique, but any kind of through-plating has to be done manually.

[pathartl]

I have a very wonder Precision Fidelity C7A tube preamp and it has some very wonderful hand drawn traces: https://www.audioasylumtrader.com/images/y2016/06/156317/IMG...

Being from the 90's and only ever seeing CAD-designed PCBs, this blew my mind the first time I took it apart.

[hinkley]

A while back there was a discussion here about how crosstalk in rectilinear traces (I think there’s a term for this but this is how I think of them) are becoming a bit of a problem and that more organic looking lines (not unlike these) can help.

Audio people are notorious for detecting noise. That hand drawn circuit might be less artistic and more practical than you’d expect.

[pathartl]

I do remember that article, but what I took away from it is it only really happens when you're working on the small, extremely dense scale.

[DanBC]

I designed a couple of small PCBs using crepe tape and etch-resist transfers. Sometimes this was directly onto the copper, but usually it was onto acetate to be used with UV sensitive etch-resist.

It was fun, but kind of a pain.

Here's a very old (1966, before I was born) article giving instructions for how to do this: http://www.rfcafe.com/references/popular-electronics/etch-pr...

[krallja]

The 8-Bit Guy repaired a Commodore calculator that had what appeared to be a hand-drawn circuit board as well: https://youtu.be/Q0rSv8NfQXQ?t=65

[StavrosK]

> It's not a new idea, but with 3D printers being common these days, it's nice to remind people of this approach to PCB manufacture.

Sure, but I had neither a 3D printer nor magazines nor an iron, and I didn't really want to get into that whole process, as it sounded like a hassle. Exporting gerbers directly to my 3D printer is trivial enough that I can do it in one minute.

> It's hard to get consistent, high quality traces - particularly if there is any kind of high density layout.

That is very possible, I still need to refine my etching technique. It's certainly been the hardest part in the ones I made, but that doesn't say much because the rest of the process was trivial.

> With some effort you can to double sided PCBs using this kind of technique, but any kind of through-plating has to be done manually.

I really want to experiment with that as well, but drilling will be harder. I wonder if it would just be easier to route some traces to the edge and solder them there instead of drilling a via.