These days, if you want to build something with modern chips and components, you probably want a custom PCB. It lets you build a neat and compact project that has a certain level of tidiness and robustness that you can’t get with a breadboard or protoboard. The only problem is that ordering PCBs takes time, and it’s easy to grow tired of shipping delays when you don’t live in the shadow of the Shenzhen board houses.
[Zach Fredin] doesn’t suffer this problem, himself. He’s whipping up high-feature PCBs at home with speed and efficiency that any maker would envy. At the 2024 Hackaday Supercon, he was kind enough to give a talk to explain the great engineering value provided by the Circuit Graver. (He was demoing it in the alley too, but you had to be there.)
It’s always been possible to make PCBs at home. Many have experimented with irons and toner and etchant baths to varying levels of success. You can do great things if you invest in tools and upskilling, but fundamentally, it can be difficult to make good PCBs that do what you want. After all, there are a things that you might want out of your custom PCBs—fine traces a being prime among them. These can be challenging to do at home with traditional techniques.
Why mill when you can carve trenches into a PCB for isolation routing instead?
[Zach’s] focus was on finding a way to make these “high feature” boards at home—specifically, referring to boards with an excellent minimum feature size. Right away, his talk shows o ..
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