> > > > Ordering PCBs is REALLY expensive for low quantities. I'm never going to = do > this again unless I'm doing a project for someone else and they're paying > for it (like in this case). I'll get myself a $100 laminator, some TRF, a= nd > dirt cheap copper clad board and make my own. Did it before, and results > were excellent. Drilling takes less than a second per hole with a tungste= n > carbide bit, and vias can be done by threading a thin wire through them a= nd > soldering. Wouldn't need much more than a 2 layer board for most things. > -- > > > "Expensive" _really_ depends on why your doing it. I started in electronics years ago as a hobby. Plastic breadboards were my friend, everything was available with leads, disassembling old TVs was wort= h it to me. I recall one day when I needed a 7400 quad nand gate. I spent about four hours cutting one off an old ISA card and soldering on little bits of wire for new leads. One day breadboards aren't good enough anymore, you want something "permanent", so I graduated to perfboard and stripboard and a dozen variant= s of it (and the cool little PCB's that are layed out like a breadboard, can'= t forget them!) I even did a couple where I just poked all the parts though a piece of cardboard from a cereal box. Marvelous learning opportunity about humidity... Then I bought a laminator and started doing toner transfer, Oh glorious day!! circuits were actually reliable and didn't fall apart on me as I worked with them. I went though about 5 sq ft of PCB stock (gotta love ebay!) learning what makes a PCB good, what layout actually works and what'= s a total PITA to build or work with. And I learned about mounting holes the hard way. A lesson I had to learn several times before it stuck, I'm sorry to say. About this time I learned about surface mount - not really trying t= o get smaller, I was sick and tired of drilling holes! What a pain!!!! Unless you use carbide bits, the fiberglass is _really_ hard on them (I've had as few as 10 holes on one bit - but they were cheap bits) and the carbide is _really_ brittle. Unless you have a decent drill press, you _will_ snap the= m off about every third hole. And then there's the etchant... Everybody start= s with Ferric Chloride. Vile, nasty stuff, stains everything, dark so you can't see what's happening to your board, and a disposal headache. I moved on to Cupric Chloride. (there's a good writeup in the archives I did a few years ago about creating it from readily available sources if you _really_ want to go down that road) Eventually I worked on some projects for other people and had "real" boards made at their expense. (university is a great place for this...) Wow, what = a difference. It turns out that "green stuff" you see on circuit boards actually has a purpose! Who knew! And now after spending a day laying out a board, you just send off the files and a few dollars and you get boards in = a few days, awesome! I didn't have to spend an hour trying to get my printer to feed a page out of some magazine, and trying to get the two layers to line up on opposite sides of the board and another hour breathing etchant fumes and then lacquer thinner to remove the toner, and two hours squinting at the drill press. Wow, life is easy!! Now I have a real job. And though I've never seen it on a job description, your first responsibility is to make sure that you use your time effectively. Just today I raked a box of odd bits off my desk and tossed it in the trash. Components, hardware, everything, at least $20 wort= h of usable tidbits - in the can. Not very long ago I would have cried at the waste. "But I could'a used that!!", now I realize that it's $20 worth of stuff and I'd spend 4 hours trying to sort it out. $20 does not buy 4 hours of my time. It's been a long road, and I seriously doubt that I'm the only one to have traveled it. I've learned _immensely_ from the journey and I wouldn't chang= e it if I could. But I don't want to repeat it either :-) -Denny --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .