[nwiswell]

While I'm sympathetic to democratizing access to simple fabrication technology, I have serious misgivings about hobbyists getting involved.

There's the obvious stuff: you can't avoid HF, and it's nasty stuff. You can die. But that's not what I'm the most worried about; people can make smart decisions to reduce risk, and ultimately people can make their own decisions about their risk tolerance.

What I'm worried about is the SF6 for the RIE. Kg for kg, that stuff has a global warming potential of more than 24,000 TIMES the warming potential of CO2. If it's all broken down in the plasma chamber, or there's exhaust scrubbers involved like you'd have at an industrial fab, then it's no issue.

But hobbyists are going to be spilling and purging a bunch of unmodified SF6. It's kind of an ecological catastrophe. Some things are better not done at home.

[satiric]

"you can't avoid HF, and that's nasty stuff" do you mean High Voltage?

[fragmede]

Hydrogen Fluoride

[satiric]

Ah gotcha, I thought it was High Frequency and was wondering why it was so dangerous lol