Homebrew PCBs

On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 16:30:30 +0100, Dave Mucha <dave_mucha@...>  
wrote:

>
> But, if you are paying your design guys $50/hr and have to wait 2 days
> for a proto-board to come back, the cost for one board could be $1,000
> for each board. imagine one a week or so ?  the cost to do it in-house
> can be recovered in a year.
> Dave


Only that a CNC mill doesn't make any bords. At best it drills and cuts  
them.
To make somewhat serious boards in house you would at least need THP, and  
not so many do that. They rather pay for faster proto services (e.g. 8  
hour).

Even plain THP boards are not really enough for a lot of stuff these days,  
you want soldermask, legend, multilayer at least. When you get into flex  
circuits and laser drilled microvias and stuff like that you'll need to  
make a lot of boards to make it work. You'd need to employ people that do  
just that, and what do you need to pay them while they are waiting for the  
design people to need the next board?

I'd say the cnc drill is one of the smaller investments if you are going  
to set up PCB fabrication and want capabilities that are at least remotely  
up to date. If you can make do with older technology it's another story.

ST