by Doug Coulter » Fri Mar 14, 2014 3:06 pm
BTW, that thread is getting so off-topic in "Vendors" that we should probably move it to "PCBs" eh? We are really trying to keep all this at least a little organized.
I suggest you make a bunch of medium complex PCBs by more than one method before choosing a solution the rest of the industry ditched long ago. Smells more like I have a solution, now find a problem - that's rarely the best way to engineer.
Then you're going to find out that the difficult and expensive parts are completely not addressed by how you get your etch. Like making the holes in fiberglass uses very expensive but short-lived carbide drills, and is super tedious to do manually - it's by far the most-work part here. And no one makes single sided boards any more, for anything that costs more than a couple bucks *total with the parts on it*. So, getting vias (tween-layer connections) is moderately key, too.
Most of the boards you actually use in your life are probably between 4 and 10 layers, laminated out of 1-2 layer boards, then via'd, and there are even blind vias on some that don't show on either surface...I think you might be trying to solve the wrong problems here, but that's just me. I'll cheer you on - some will be interested, but I know how I do this, it works, it's better than sikscreen, and neither way solves the real issues anyway. The boards used in the log-moth project, the tiny ones, only cost about $2 to have made (and the PCB house did the panelizing free), double sided and solder masked. The motherboard was 10x that price - all those holes are what cost the money. Waaaaay back in the day, when things were lots less dense (tube TV's for example) the holes were big enough that they could be punched in a custom punch-die lashup. No more....now you can order and get 4 mil holes, easy. Those can't be punched into 1/16th inch blanks, it would be like trying to punch out the hole in a gun barrel - 8 calibers deep.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.