Science/Engineering/Technical forums

Hello all!

My name is Dan Eakin, i'm 30, living near capital city MI USA. I work as a level 3 sys admin (linux) and have a whole pile of hobbies that seem relevant to this community. My primary hobby is i'm a blacksmith, knife smithing specifically, but i don't use the complete old school way of doing things, opting to work easier through technology. I also have a prototyping bench for electronics and robotics. I'm completely self taught, with only formal education in software development. I thoroughly enjoy the notion of open source technology and information, and will be excited to not only read what you all have to say, but throw a couple articles back to the whole. If you have any questions for me, let me know

Welcome, Dan. Even as a long-time linux user, sysadmin tips are always valuable. I keep various cheatsheets here, because after googling for an hour and seeing 40 "not quite what I was looking for " solutions to an issue, and finally finding the right one (which is often just changing a few characters in some file in /etc), I tend to forget what works, and of course it's a moving target anyhow. Our software sections have been a bit weak, so we'd be really glad for more there. Let me know if you think we need to add categories - up to a point, it's not hard for me to do. The trick seems to be having enough, but not so many the tree is fat at the root. A lot of the other guys I've not yet had time to add (I'm trying to do it when there aren't a bunch of lurkers so I don't get sneak-ins) are also software guys, so things should pick up there, or so I hope.

I don't hate B Gates, but lemme tell you - once I stopped getting paid (highly) to fix windows issues (up to and including writing drivers) - it's outa there. I guess we could thank him for providing computer guys with a source of income, fixing their flaws.

microsoft is tech job security

i'm doing pretty good as a linux admin though, bought a house, have enough money for hobbies and stuff. Currently working, as you might have guessed by the other thread, to get a pretty comprehensive PCB DIY manufacture solution implemented in the house. Its definately making ends meet.

BTW, that thread is getting so off-topic in "Vendors" that we should probably move it to "PCBs" eh? We are really trying to keep all this at least a little organized.

I suggest you make a bunch of medium complex PCBs by more than one method before choosing a solution the rest of the industry ditched long ago. Smells more like I have a solution, now find a problem - that's rarely the best way to engineer.

Then you're going to find out that the difficult and expensive parts are completely not addressed by how you get your etch. Like making the holes in fiberglass uses very expensive but short-lived carbide drills, and is super tedious to do manually - it's by far the most-work part here. And no one makes single sided boards any more, for anything that costs more than a couple bucks *total with the parts on it*. So, getting vias (tween-layer connections) is moderately key, too.
Most of the boards you actually use in your life are probably between 4 and 10 layers, laminated out of 1-2 layer boards, then via'd, and there are even blind vias on some that don't show on either surface...I think you might be trying to solve the wrong problems here, but that's just me. I'll cheer you on - some will be interested, but I know how I do this, it works, it's better than sikscreen, and neither way solves the real issues anyway. The boards used in the log-moth project, the tiny ones, only cost about $2 to have made (and the PCB house did the panelizing free), double sided and solder masked. The motherboard was 10x that price - all those holes are what cost the money. Waaaaay back in the day, when things were lots less dense (tube TV's for example) the holes were big enough that they could be punched in a custom punch-die lashup. No more....now you can order and get 4 mil holes, easy. Those can't be punched into 1/16th inch blanks, it would be like trying to punch out the hole in a gun barrel - 8 calibers deep.

Yeah, thats the feel i'm starting to get. I'll have to reevaluate the process. 2 dollars for a 1in round board is probably too high, considering the amount of detail i don't need on that board, definately too high if i can make them myself cheaper. Push comes to shove a black perm market and a glass pan w/ ferric chloride will do the job really. These are really simple and uncomplicated 'bits', the idea of a modularized whole, part of an education system i'm putting together. Each little card will have a chip, and any discrete parts associated to it, on it, with a few headers to network them together. but yeah. lets move it to PCB forum, its definately going that direction