Circuit board making.

[piratepaul]

Hi, I consider myself to be a sort of semi pro... I do a lot of work on boats for which I get paid, I also give advice mostly marine electrics for free. I also do a lot of amateur stuff ... in fact my life is devoted to it, bioelectronics, electrophysiology etc... what fun ... it is tempting to start a bio thread but where to start? So I will start a circuit board thread and hope people get involved...

Cards on the table I make bits and bobs for money, mostly one offs but I would like to set up a small production line on my bench so I can design a simple circuit, may be a voltage regulator or some such to sell on ebay, I also do stuff for myself and need circuit boards.
Lots of people have business interests in electronics, for me its a combination of business and pleasure, hope to get away with the thread... Tar&stuff.

What are the ins and outs of making circuit boards?

Lazer printing sounds good, I have 12 and 24V power supplies. I have a power inverter and solar panels... What sort of min power supply could be expected?
What are the alternatives?

I have seen hand drills on ebay for drilling boards, what about a CHEAP robot ie a drill press which drills holes to a computer program? Maybe I could make a robot but hmmmm could be probs.

So what do we know on this subject?

Tar&stuff.

[enCoder]

As for drilling your boards, you couldn't get much better than a CNC machine running off MACH3 or a similar control application. Ready built small CNC machines are available on ebay, but they are costly. You can expect to pay upwards of £600.00 for a full system.

Or you could design and build your own CNC machine as I did. The advantage of having a CNC machine is that it is also capable of milling out the circuit which means no messing about with chemicals etc. So if money is no object buy a CNC machine.