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  • with modern Chinese manufacturing, you get 2-layer PCB with via and soldermask gorgeously made for $4 in 24 hours (actually samples can even be free in China). why bother make PCB at home with all the nasty chemicals or CNC ?
    by ycui1986
  • I don't really get this. If I'm doing vias, I'm nearly finished with prototyping. Not to mention routing is a part of that and I don't want to route twice.
    by bongodongobob
  • It's a shame there aren't US manufacturers who can manufacture custom PCBs as cheaply as JLPCB or PCBWay.

    These types of lasers might be a stopgap if tariffs make buying from those companies inordinately expensive, however the extreme cost, and the need to do a bunch of cleanup kind of makes me suspect there needs to be another iteration of this tech.

    by LarsDu88
  • https://toolong.link/v?w=A_IUIyyqw0M&l=en
    by androng
  • Cool concept but as someone that makes quite a few PCBs a year I don't see any use of this for me personally.

    Once you get to a certain component size and layer count, home making PCBs doesn't make any more sense.

    I do still order only PCB and solder stencil initially to hand solder and test boards before PCBA but by that time I have tested most on breadboards and fitted the PCB in CAD to wherever it will go.

    While waiting the 1-2 weeks for the boards and components I usually work on the firmware.

    by sschueller
  • They also have a pick and place machine.[1] It's a lot like the defunct Liteplacer.[2]

    It seems to be a kit, not a pre-assembled unit. It's hard to tell from the documentation. It looks a bit flimsy for the rigidity required. Same problem as the Liteplacer. To download the "white paper", you have to go through the onboarding funnel and agree to being spammed, which is always annoying.

    The frustrating thing about prototyping pick and place and solder paste machines is that production people want speed, which costs. The prototype-only market isn't big enough. (Has the low-cost reflow oven situation improved? The low-end ones had hot spots that would scorch a board.)

    Compare this Neoden line of products.[3] No idea if these are any good. US$3000 for pick and place. That looks like a much more useful product than the Opulo machine. It can work with a wider range of part sizes; not everything has to be on an 8mm tape.

    (The problem with plated-through holes, of which "vias" are a subset, is that they require a number of chemical baths which aren't worth setting up for a one-off.)

    [1] https://www.opulo.io/products/lumenpnp

    [2] https://www.liteplacer.com/

    [3] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/SMT-PCB-Production-Li...

    by Animats
  • So glad to see a Stephen Hawes video make the front page. I've been trying for a few years now to get discussion going around his opensource pick and place the LumenPNP[0]

    His goal of bringing small scale manufacturing down to the workshop / home garage level is really inspiring and is especially relevant in the modern era of tariffs and economic upheaval.

    To get good at something people need to get hands on experience and it needs to be affordable and relatively easy to use. The kinds of tools that Stephen is promoting make that possible and that's critical if we want people to get good at building things.

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LumenPnP

    by Teever
  • Cool that people are trying new things. And I sure hate waiting for a PCB order to make its way from Hong Kong or Taiwan to Nebraska.

    I'm not sure I want the trade-off of having to try to fit my existing circuit into those pre-populated vias.

    Part of the joy of PCB layout is trying to be "optimal". That might be optimal in board size, optimal in the elegance of the trace layouts. I even trying to minimize vias (or not have them altogether). With prefab vias, there will be kludges to work my own vias into those locations. And, honestly, the unused vias will annoy me as well.

    I'm a sucker for solder masks, silkscreening… I think I am too in love with what I get back from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

    My "quick prototyping" consists of breadboarding and trashy perf-board mockups.

    by JKCalhoun

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