solarwind wrote:
> The most time-consuming part of making PCBs is the drilling part. How
> do you guys drill your PCBs? What's the best and fastest and cheapest
> way? (Olin, don't give me the "you only get to pick two" thing :P)

That fact that you asked me not to mention it means you've already learned
something.

Holes and vias was always a issue with the boards I did manually years ago.
I found a drill press a must.  Surely you know someone who has one.  The
trick about leaving little spots of etched copper at holes to act like
guides helps, but such small spots can be problems themselves.  You may have
to manually make a dent with a centerpunch for each hole, then drill with a
drill press.

As for vias, you can consider most holes for thru hole leads as a via
opportunity by soldering both on the top and the bottom of the board.
Unfortunatly this doesn't work for DIP sockets since the top ends of the
pins are not accessible.  One time I used wire wrap sockets just to get the
long leads.  All the DIP sockets were then up off the board so that I could
get at the top end of the pins.  It looked silly but it worked.


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