solarwind wrote:
> This process
> turned out to be fun and educational and I leaned a skill that I'm
> sure I'll find very useful in the future.

Everyone that eventually plans to design PC boards regularly should do this
a few times.  The real lesson is that it's a very costly and pain in the
butt way to make mediocre PC boards.  For $109 you can get 100 square inches
of double sided boards with plated vias, solder mask, and silkscreen.  You
said it only took a hour, but I doubt that includes even the amortized
per-board cost of scaring up the materials, setting up, cleaning up, and the
cost of not having plated vias, solder mask, or silkscreen.  For a hobbyist,
time is worth a lot less than when you're doing this for real.  For now it's
novel and therefore fun.  That will get old fast.  Soon enough you'll be
making real money, spare time will be scarce, and $109 will look like a
great alternative.

I experimented with various ways of making PC boards when I was in college
and even shortly after.  Since I was also into photography and had my own
darkroom, I used photographic resist and eventually got reasonably good
results.  It was fun to do a few times and to figure out the process, but
once I had it worked out it just seemed too much hassle to do.  Back then
(1980) there were no available small quantity commercial alternatives.
There was also no PC design software accessible to hobbyists.  At work
(Hewlett Packard) I was still drawing schematics on D size vellum by hand
and a draftsman would take a couple of weeks to lay out a board by hand
using calibrated widths of black tape.  I even wrote my own auto router, but
it wasn't sophisticated enough and the computers of the day weren't powerful
enough for it to be useful for anything but small hobby projects.

I don't miss those days.


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