On 23-Mar-11 05:06, Olin Lathrop wrote: > 'William Chops" Westfield '> It depends. Couple bucks for blank copper clad. Couple bucks for >> etchant. Significant bucks for the high-grade ink cartridge (for >> direct to PCB printing) (which may or may not dry up between PCBs (I >> hate inkjets!)) or a couple bucks for special transfer paper or > And not having plated holes, decent design rules like at least 8/8 mils > needed for modern packages, no silkscreen, no soldermask. When you reall= y > add it up, you're probably paying yourself less than $10/hour to make you= r > own boards. I started off using the professionally-made "Press-n-Peel" sheets by=20 Techniks with my laser printer. The results were completely=20 satisfactory and probably better than I could have done with plain=20 transparencies or whatever. I was all excited and ready to fab my own=20 boards for my hobby work, even got pretty good at two-sided boards done=20 that way. And then I tried sending a board out to a real fab once. IMHO, it's=20 totally worth it to get a high quality, plated, drilled, masked board.=20 I haven't touched my etchant tank since. --=20 Steve Willoughby / steve@alchemy.com "A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for." PGP Fingerprint 48A3 2621 E72C 31D9 2928 2E8F 6506 DB29 54F7 0F53 --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .