[bcaa7f3a8bbc]

I bet many people will say that today's circuit boards are so cheap and making one at home is just too troublesome - and these days you can't make a good digital system on a two-layer circuit boards without a ground plane and controlled impedance, so why bother? And the usual reply is that you can get a board immediately without waiting, and for low-speed analog circuits or small microcontrollers, two-layer boards are usually adequate.

I believe while both are true, there's also an important application that is not always mentioned - RF prototypes. It's still very expensive to buy a circuit board made of specialized low-loss RF laminate, such as the Rogers series. But raw boards can be purchased at a reasonable price. Having a CNC/milling machine can be extremely useful to prototype RF planar circuits in the GHz realm.

[StavrosK]

> I bet many people will say that today's circuit boards are so cheap and making one at home is just too troublesome

I've heard this a lot and can never understand it. It's like saying "why use a 3D printer when you can get the same thing for $50 or $10 and a month of waiting?". Because sometimes I want a good-enough thing for cheap now, not a perfect thing for expensive later.

[danhor]

The reason is that ordering PCBs take ~2 weeks and cost 6$, where any time invested in making them yourself is more expensive. Additionally a 3D printer is much less of a hassle to use (basically level the bed, start the print and wait) than etching PCBs.

The only reason for doing them yourself are (if you already have all the required things):

- Getting them really quick (~hours)

- Getting them somewhat quick (saving on shipping, around 30$)

- Wanting to

With ~everyone using smd components today, soldermask is also pretty much a must-have which makes doing it yourself even more annoying.

In comparison to 15 years ago, where doing it yourself was the only option, it's really understandable that a lot of people just don't anymore.

[StavrosK]

Yes, exactly. I always want them really quick, because I'm in the middle of a hacky build I'll always make one of. Same for ~all my maker friends, it sucks to leave a build right in the height of motivation to wait for PCBs, so most of them use perfboards or similar ugly hacks. CNCed PCBs would be a great improvement.

[mousepilot]

I had a buddy try to etch a pc board once. He used a disposeable aluminum tray to do the etching in. Can you guess how it went?

[fxtentacle]

I'd argue completely differently: PCB assembly shops are usually unwilling to work with externally-produced PCBs, so there's no point in making the PCB yourself.

Unless, of course, you are really good at soldering. But for me, 0.5mm pitch ICs or 0.4mm pitch connectors are way out of my motor skill league.

Of course, at that level, it's mostly down to using a pick&place robot, which could easily be shared by multiple people. So I imagine that in a few years, there'll be P&P centers where you can rent such a robot by the hour, similar to how there are 3D printing communities nowadays.

[bcaa7f3a8bbc]

> PCB assembly shops are usually unwilling to work with externally-produced PCBs, so there's no point in making the PCB yourself.

I think these PCB processes and machines are all really designed for prototypes and experiments, it's the aspect that they're great for. If you find that you need to send them to an external PCB assembly shop, you probably shouldn't make your own board to begin with. Same for externally-produced professional PCBs - I order a raw board rather than a fully-assembled prototype because my chip is an uncommon part and they don't offer this chip for prototype assembly.

> Unless, of course, you are really good at soldering. But for me, 0.5mm pitch ICs or 0.4mm pitch connectors are way out of my motor skill league.

Speaking of soldering, I have no problem with 0.5mm pitch LQFP ICs with a good stereo microscope - for me I can just use brute force. However, my own problem is 0.5mm QFN - I have to use stencil printing and reflow soldering since I'm not good enough to hand solder that. I find a high quality board with accurate solder mask between the pin (no bridging), and with ENIG surface finishing (maximum flatness) are extremely helpful. I don't think a simple DIY PCB can handle these applications (but I'd be glad to find otherwise). But again, this was a 1 Gbps+ board.

Conclusion: I still believe DIY PCBs have their places for prototypes and experiments, but if one argues it's not useful because it cannot be assembled by a PCB shop or it cannot reach 1 Gbps, it would be demanding too much and not really fair for these simple boards.

[baybal2]

Not everywhere you can get a board done in 8 hours...

There are places in the world where even DHL Sameday needs 1 month to get.