alt Hacker NewsOK, so people are ordering a custom PCB from China for a one-off? Whatever happened to making them at home? I remember my brothers doing this in the bathroom sink with a board coated with copper¹, some special markers to draw the circuit on the board and chemicals to wash off the extra copper. I’m guessing they might have used our dad’s electric drill to put some holes in the board as well, but looking at the article, this doesn’t seem like an order from China need.
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1. Some details may be incorrect as I was 10, this was the late 70s and I only saw the results, not the process.
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What happened is that you can get a set of 5 custom PCBs for about $2. The quality is much higher and you don't have to deal with nasty chemicals. I'll never manually etch a board ever again if I can help it.
These days, a one-off PCB is dirt cheap. They’ll provide and solder the components for you, for less money than you could buy them to do it yourself.
Buying custom PCBs from China makes sense if you're interested in making electronics. It was more than a decade ago that the equation shifted to the point that making them at home has only made sense if you're interested in the process of making PCBs themselves.
Things like soldermask, multiple layer stackups and plated holes and vias are standard on dirt-cheap Chinese boards but are challenging and time-consuming to do at home.
I used to do this at home. Either thermal transfer or also used a flat bed plotter with an adapter for a Staedler permanent market to draw directly on the PCB. Fun times. Ferric Choride IIRC for etching or you could also use hydrogen peroxide which was much slower...
And yes drill through holes.
Ofcourse only good for two sided (layers) boards at the most.
In addition to what others said, home-etched PCBs are just much lower quality. We're no longer living in a world where every component has leads on a 2.54 mm grid, so tolerances matter a lot more. Also, SMD means you really need vias and a solder mask.
The problem isn't that people outsource it, it's that they need to outsource to China. That's an abject failure of domestic PCB manufacturers who simply don't want to deal with retail customers.