Talk:Kit wishlist

PCB manufacturing tools

I disagree with the lack of need for chemical PCB etch/expose equipment. The milling technique is quite slow and expensive and not the a very cost effective use of milling equipment, except maybe for prototyping very small boards. Also the proposed mill will not be able to produce high quality PCB with fine traces and pads for SMT components. TH 17:38, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I second that. Milling is good for drilling holes, and has a niche for fast turnaround tiny boards (ie babysit the machine for 3 hours, not wait a week). The accuracy is pretty poor, so forget any kind of fine-pitch surface mount (even SOIC is pushing it on our machine). Milling tips are expensive and snap regularly. It's very easy to get the depth wrong, snap the tip or gouge great grooves out of your board. You'll always get far better definition from optical transfer and chemical etch, even basic methods eg laser-printed projector film and UV exposure. That level of basic chemical etch is worth having, as well as some recommended cheap low-volume board fabs (eg Olimex or pcb.laen.org - both non-UK ones I haven't tried; are there any cheap local ones?) TheoMarkettos 23:56, 20 May 2012 (BST)