[OJFord]

> You'll spend days or weeks getting the process and tooling right, and you still have to manually wire any vias that connect the front and back sides of the PCB.

Fancy! At school we had a UV box & bath, and made single-sided PCBs. I assume you can use the same process just with boards that have copper both sides. It was great for demystifying the process, and I suspect economical in a school setting.

(Aside: I then studied EE (+CS mix) at university, and there was none if that. Many of my peers without the opportunity to take Electronics at GCSE & A Level would be nonethewiser. Maybe that's fine, lines have to be drawn, but seems to me like an easy extension of existing lab assignments.)

As a hobbyist, if I had the room I'd certainly want the kit. Nothing beats the immediacy for prototyping , or turning around fixes/modifications. The basic stuff isn't prohibitively expensive, we're not talking even hundreds of units before break-even.