Homebrew PCB Cost vs JLCPCB, PCBWay, Sodium Persulphate, Ferric Chloride in 2024

Hi,
Thought I would make my first topic on the new forum (I came here from EPE chatzone). Just finished making a batch of 3 PCBs at home over the weekend. With developer that was going off ans spent ferric chloride, had some 'fun' getting the boards completed. My laser printer, used for transparencies is also acting up. The tale of woe has a rationale.
To continue making PCBs @ home, something I've done in earnest since 2005, will require some additional costs now. Moving from ferric chloride to sodium persulphate, is something I'm considering but the storage life is a few weeks, compared to a few years, for the 2L of ferric chloride I neutralised today (a very yucky process). The cost per board goes up if I need to buy mix more etchant every time. A new laser printer, has other uses so is not too bad.
With the plethora of cheap PCB fabrication houses and sites like https://pcbshopper.com/ to find the best price, for perhaps 6 PCBs made this year, is it worth making boards at home?
Admittedly, two designs made this year, one from the EPE June 2002 (Frequency reference) and the other a 5x5x5 LED cube, I only had a PCB artwork to fabricate from, no gerber files. I could not send these to a fab house so they had to be made at home.
Opinions and views welcome.

Ian... you sound like a man after my own heart.  I have always made my own PCBs, and wrote a story about it for EETimes here.  Apart from anything else, it's fun, and the thrill of watching your first PCB emerge from the etchant is comparable to printing your first black & white photograph (you see how long I've been doing this
I've used ammonium persulphate and it does not seem to go off - I got a 500 ml bottle and use the minimum every time and I've still got some left.  I haven't made a PCB in about a year (need to do some though so when I do I'll report back on how it works now) but there's nothing wrong with ferric chloride (apart from being messy and corrosive).  For developer I've always used caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) which you can buy as drain cleaner - just make sure it has nothing else added - at 7g per litre.  It works with Positiv 20 (see story) and with commercially coated boards.  I bought a jewellers scale to measure it out - A$13 I think. My dev/etch trays are takeaway containers and my exposure device is a modified photo frame (it used to be 5 minutes for Positiv 20 but the commercial boards need only 1 minute in full sunlight).  So all in all I can make my own boards really cheaply.  As you say, you need a laser printer, but you could buy some transparent film and go along to a copy place and ask them to use your film (make sure it's for laser printers, not inkjet).  And as you say, a laser printer is a good thing to have around for other things.  Tip - make sure it's not set to Economy mode, the printing is thinner then and can let some light through and lead to a patchy result.Your PCBShopper does look a good place for finding cheap board manufacture.  The advantages of going this route are many - you get a professional finish, double sided boards are easy, you can get solder mask and component designations, etc. (though they may cost more).  But you have to have a gerber file for them to work from - as you point out they can't work with artwork directly.I'd certainly use one of these services if I had a gerber file and certainly for a double sided board (I've never done one at home). Also if you wanted multiple boards all the same. Or wanted very fine track widths.   But to knock out the odd single sided simple hobby board at home, as long as you (or your wife!!) have no problem with the chemicals and time, I'd carry on the way you are.  It's horses for courses really - why not get a couple of boards done commercially and then decide?Best / David

The trouble is, it's difficult to even talk about whether commercial pcb making is worth it,  as there are so many factors involved in the price. Size, number of layers, number of holes, through-plated or not, amount of printing, etc, and not least the number of boards.
Home brewing has many disadvantages. Personally, I have trouble getting a track between 1/10" spaced ic pins, double-sided is way too much trouble hence lots of links, no printing, touching up usually required, etc. But even so, apart from Veroboard (sorry, "stripboard" , there's no other option if you want just one inexpensive board.
Does anyone have any extremely rough average type price for a single board say postcard size for a circuit of average complexity, of say two sides?? It's not easy!Graham

As it happened, i had a conversation with a fellow at work last week about this subject. It seems that he'd spent the entire weekend making a double-sided board (using two 1/32 single sided boards) and was wondering if the labor was really worth it. I did a quick search and found the following sitehttp://www.ladyada.net/library/pcb/manufacturers.htmlIt's decidedly USA-centric  but gives a good feel for what's out there and a rough idea on prices

David,
Thinking it over, I'm inclined to keep making a few PCBs @ home but moving from ferric chloride to sodium persulphate, less noxious. The rest of my process works quite well, when the chemicals are fresh, see here.
In the past I've used Olimex, PCBTrain, Eurocircuits, Wondom, Seedstudio, Micetek and Quickteck to fabricate PCBs and I've had a couple hundred assembled too by Micetek and Quickteck.I've done double sided 3 times, 2 out of 3 worked! Invariably when designing the PCB I make the other layer, simple horizontal or vertical tracks that can be tinned copper wire. I also change the drill/pad size a bit to make it easier to solder.Graham,

If you set some design rules and use a good quality transparency, you can achieve 0.010"/0.254mm trace widths and gap. Getting the exposure correct helps, I detail my method in the link in my response to David.With regards to costing, Take this PCB, if I enter the dimensions of 98x77mm into PCB shopper, for a quantity of 1, with the default settings, it can costs as little as £1.60 each  for a qty of 5 (£8 total).  Using my equipment, processing  a 4"x6" (100x150mm) 3U PCB, which includes transparency, developer, etchant and the UV clad board costs nearly £6. This is enough to make two of those PCBs as I cut the board in two to make them at the weekend. For just £2 more, I could have had another 3 assembled PCBs, in 11-19 working days!

For complex boards, it's tricky to justify the labour, especially if after the etching process and trimming etc, it requires many holes to be drilled! I can see the advantages of surface mount! For the immediate fix or rush jobs, @/home can not be beaten and it's something to do in Winter months, in the summer I have other plans.

I agree, I think it's one more thing to sub-contract out, in the knowledge that I could do it if I had the time, but nowadays I find life gets in the way and I've other things to do. Unless it's a small through-hole board, I probably couldn't be bothered. Depends how much disposable time I've got on my hands. When you compare the cost to buy it in vs.  the hourly rate you're working for DIY, I think my time's worth more to me! Same with many things really.

I have been making pcbs at home for many years.  In the past 7 years I've used an ink jet and paper/oil with 64 pin tqfp. However, a year ago I decided to try elecrow.com as i reckoned that a 100 pin tqfp was probably pushing it, and I haven't looked back. I usually pay around £8 for 5 double sided boards 10x10cm,  but they have offers. The prices are fully inclusive, not based on holes etc. Over the summer I ordered on a Sunday and had the boards 8 days later. I like the multiple copies and often cut bits out for other projects.Once you stray from 10x10 the price shoots up, but you can always break the project up. 10 x 16 is around £25 for 5.

HiWhen prototyping, once you get past the breadboard stage I don't think you can beat having the capability to produce your own PCB, and the same goes for one-off's. I've never got my PCB design 100% correct first time Those elecrow.com prices Basement Boy mentions above do look very competitive though and I will be checking them out for anything other than prototypes.
I'm very lucky in that I have a PCB "kit" from Mega-Electronics which includes UV / Tank / Drills etc and if this is set up I can go from printing a transparency to a tinned board ready for soldering in hours (depending on complexity and number of holes being drilled). I find this ideal for my needs but I wouldn't say I am good enough for a small production run but the kit certainly is. I did say "if this is set up". If it isn't then add in a pain to clear space in garage, connect water supply, fill tank with etchant and the fun afterwards clearing it all away.As Alan states though, for hobbyist use time is possibly more important and drilling holes neatly isn't high on my fun list. I am following the progress of Zippy Robotics with interest and I'm on their waiting list. With that speed of production I will have no excuse to not build my ideas and conquer the world by noon. Ready thyselves to be my minions, don't say you haven't been warned :)Regards

I worked at a place that milled circuit boards 30 years ago for internal use. The machines are dusty, noisy and slow. The latter may have changed, but the first 2 wont! It ate mill bits, which are expensive, and you had to fully bell it out to ensure the whiskers were all gone. And there is a minimum track size and clearance. And don't buy economy board - it ain't flat enough.There are kick starters too, but for the price I can get a bunch made in China, or EU if I'm in a hurry. That's not to say that I dont want one. It's up there with a laser cutter and a 3D printer.It's a fine line between the time you have for your hobby and what else you need to do. If I take Alan's argument to its natural conclusion I would buy ready made products. So at some stage making the PCB is a pleasure, same as those hours I spend cursing my software that refuses to work as I tell it

Ha ha.....The more important the software need, the more likely it is to crash........ My rules of thumb for software are that if it cannot fail, run Unix. If it cannot fail and you have no money, run linux. If you don't care run Windows and if you don't want it to work with anything run Mac
The videos on the Zippy site show reasonably complex boards being milled (SMT) and the specs they claim are certainly good enough for anything I'm likely to knock up (bear in mind my army of robots will build themselves after I get the first one running).
Appreciate what you are saying about the economy board. Zippy test the board for "height" to build a "map"of the surface prior to milling so that may help with economy not being too flat. I will be interested to hear the feedback from those beta testing the units that are out now.I did look at "cheap" Chinese machines but they all wanted a PC running XP and a parallel port. Future proof there so a safe investment..!Prior to knowing about elecrow, I'd based costs of one-off / prototype PCBs from feedback in the old EPE forum and in the few years I've had the Mega kit I would say it has been cost effective. Even at the elecrow prices, for the boards I've made I am still better off having the Mega kit (and I am including failed PCBs due to my mistake in this too). I do appreciate though that the kit is a hefty initial investment for any DIYer (lucky me as I didn't pay for mine personally). The Zippy more so but if it can do as advertised then I think it could do very well indeed. A board in a few tens of minutes is a very tempting offer. I think this machine is aimed at prototyping rather than full on production and hopefully if it does well the prices will come down.Maybe someone here is planning a review? I'm sure that would be popular. For those that perhaps haven't yet heard of Zippy, here is a link www.zippyrobotics.com
Regards,

Hi,
Have just ordered some low costs PCBs from Elecrow, 5 PCBs, 78x95mm, delivered to the UK for less than £10. Will post some feedback on quality once I receive them.Ian

I have used Elecrow many times in the past and the results have always been excellent. I'd definitely recommend them if you can wait up to a  month for them to arrive (which, given the price, I'm willing to do). I've also paid to have them DHL'd to me and had PCBs returned to me in less than a week - amazing!
Another interesting one is dirtypcbs.com where you can "panelize" your own designs to share the cost across several PCB designs. For $25 (delivered) you can get approx 11 copies of a 10cm x 10cm panel which could hold several sub PCBs, which proves very economical indeed.
-Andy

I still keep Ferric Chloride in the lab. These days I will make a PCB up using a resist pen. The last time I did that was to make a PSU for my laser. Anything more complicated I will send out for professional manufacture. It's just become to cheap, or I have more pocket money. Not sure which

HiA colleague just ordered 20 x SS (160x100) PCBs from elecrow. Order was placed last Friday from UK and he received them yesterday. Admittedly he used "rush" service and the cost including shipping and duties came to approx £100 or £5 per board. This isn't that much more expensive than just pre-sensitised boards that you need to expose/etch/drill etc yourself. I haven't seen the boards yet but from pictures they look OK and worth the money. These boards will be to field trial a product before further modifications are made.
However I could still have done that quicker (not nearly as professional looking) but money talks. In answer to the original post it doesn't look like it does it? as long as you don't mind the wait.Regards

I've been ordering PCBs from PCBWAY in China. Boards back in 8 days, cheap. Of course, it's all relative.
I have all the usual kit (ferric chloride solution, UV box, photoresist PCB, drill) but I find that if I can design a PCB with a marker pen, and draw the layout on a bare copper PCB, I will do that without thinking. The last design was a power supply for a laser. All through hole, so I drew a crude circuit layout and etched it. Works a treat. Most of my designs these days use headers and SMD components, so I go the China PCB route. I last did a double sided PCB at home 6 years ago, and will never do it again.