Just what the DIY'er needs:

[ibi sum]

> Not too cheap this stuff (about £3-5 an A4 sheet on ebay), and quite 
> hard to source, but I can see how it could make it less than an hour 
> from concept and printout to populated PCB for projects. Esp surface 
> mount stuff. Through hole would need a further process to epoxy it onto 
> a board of some sort.


Multi-layer surface mount is indeed a very feasible product of your
efforts, I think .. first print the pcb on the copperclad, maybe
laser-cut (to precise scale) an alignment/guide template of suitably
measured fiber-board, for the SMD components to *sit in* for accurate
alignment/assembly, cover properly with solder dust, bake, remove
alignment templates (or leave on for case cool), done.  Add layers to
each other, make as many complete circuits per-sheet as you can, use
printed templates to direct heat application, and you can, feasibly, do
your own multi-layer SMD .. 

I have seen the commercial machines and assembly for such SMD production
in progress, and always note that it seems to be little more than a
sophisticated printer, sitting in a workbench environment.  So if you do
a bit of materials hacking probably the gap between your find, and the
industrial reality, is pretty fine.

<ranting_tangent>

Apropos rescued hardware, I have been having a blast with the regular
trips to the dump to deposit the poobags .. maybe I've mentioned it
before, but such humble acts have recently given me a bit of a
motivation towards a political agenda!  Recycling of Electronics.

Last week, at the local dump, a place I'm enjoying going to more and
more, after depositing a large pile of young fellas shit, a bunch of
crap from the household, and some other crap in the bins, I headed
straight for the 'electronics junk' bin.  After a bit of futzing around,
I pulled out a fully working arcade controller with 6 buttons and a
great joystick, a wireless scale (still working), some sort of
automation-system button-bank thing from I don't know where, consisting
of 130 industrial, square internally-lit buttons on a grid, ready to be
wired up to .. something .. I have a pocket calculator collection, all
perfectly working, still quite useful.  And I have taken to pulling the
knobs off anything I can find during the poobag run, and now have a knob
box.  :)  Last week, I fully denuded a dead SONY stereo system, I felt
bad at first but then I looked at the knobs, looked at the dead boxes
and speakers and so on, looked back at the knobs, and took them. :)  It
is horrid what people are throwing away, for electronics, imho, also ..
we have a collection of perfectly working LCD watches from someone in
the neighborhood, weird .. 

I think I will try to get involved in electronics recycling, somehow.  I
dunno what the hell else to do but try to salvage anything I see that
could be perfectly working, somewhere, in the world.  Instead of, you
know, becoming landfill.  I really think the decadence of obsolescence
is a fatal liability of our computing experience, in terms of physical
resources.  For every computer out there in the world that is useless to
someone, there is someone it will be useful to.  Here, or in the future.
The costs of the process which produced your handheld are sufficiently
expensive to the human race that it behooves the final end-user to
maintain the product: for future generations whose access to all our
power in the modern age to create such devices, is not, necessarily,
guaranteed.  Moores Law only works when you can turn on the power.  As
the computer is a device capable of infinite application to any possible
subject worthy of being described by a language, any language at all,
the notion that a computing device is 'no longer useful' is simply a
matter of communication.  If the machine is maintained as useful, and a
user is found, it ought not to have been dumped back into the earth as
trash.

</ranting_tangent>


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ibi sum
::: :::