Years, no, decades ago, I built a Heath/Zenith color TV. Assemble by number more or less. It worked for many years. Other than that and some Heath amps and short wave radio I have breadboarded, I have etched a few PCBâs for small stuff and in recent years reflowed assorted small parts including ledâs.
Anybody here ever have a 60âs Ducati? They had real crappy boards in the headlight instead of the usual real wires everybody else used. My first self etched board was made to replace that awful OEM thing. Other than that I loved those early Ducatiâs.
I would rate home made PCB considerable lower than ordered PCBâs with your own layout. It may be fun to make your own PCBâs, but the quality and complexity is rather limited, compared to a professionally manufactured PCB.
I have done a few home made PCBâs, but the quality has always been very bad. Very long time ago I got a link to a company that could do PCBs for a reasonable amount of money (<$50 for double sided, plated through) and since that time I have not done any PCBs at home.
I tried not to use too many words, but the idea was if you made it to the bottom of the list, you were also able to draw them yourself. The idea of milling a PCB you downloaded off the internet is not a choice on the list.
That is not really related, I have always drawn my own schematic and then layouted my own PCBâs, when I used Eagle to design the PCBâs* I mostly used the auto router. Now that I have changed to KiCad I do my own layouts without auto router.
*Very early I may have used something called Orcad, but that was on company time.
Six years college for computer science, computer and electrical engineering, then over the last 8 years turned a computer/monitor refurbishing business in my basement into a small-electronics design and manufacture shop with pick-and-place, reflow oven, even some CNC metalwork machines for heatsinks and cases. All electronics designed, PCBs laid out and firmware written by myself or my co-founder who left four years ago to design rocket engines in Texas. Projects range from 200A power supply breakouts to USB devices with sub-0.5mm pitch QFN. Currently working on a family of flashlight drivers, DC motor driver for an electric go-kart, powered USB hubs and a fourth generation of hobby-scale bitcoin miners.
In â85, I âput togetherâ both the David Hafler DH-110 preamp and DH-220 amp. While it was only âsoldering by numbers,â they were both working when I sold them 15 years later.
Owned the David Hafler DH-101 preamp back in the 80âs driving a Harmon Kardon 100w per side power amp into JBL L100T floor standing speakers.
Good reliable rig withstood many parties
That was decades ago, as a teen in the 70âs⌠I started to buy kits in the UK, then went to draw boards with a special pencil that i would dip in some liquid to etch away the copper⌠Then i got bored with all that mess and for small projects without IC i came to use rows of screw connectorsâŚ
I have only wired / installed / repaired, electrical things like auto radio and speakers, house receptacles and switches, cnc machine spindles and proximity switches, flashlight drivers and leds. Always wanted to learn electronics, but its just too much for me. I donât see how resistors, capacitors, diodes, transformers, can make the music, tv, computer do its thing, so I rely on you guys to help me in the dark.