Cool! But the wires!

I'm not a fan of breadboards, they tend to be unreliable even for trivial circuits. We need something more affordable and practical for home PCBs[^1]. Why is it that nobody has invented a tin 3D printer, or at least a 2D version of it, i.e. a tin plotter?

[^1]: I'm discouraged from home-etching by the chemicals and the dark-room part of the process.

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kevin_thibedeau 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Just use a fabrication service. You can't readily make plated through holes and vias at home. The services do a much better job than any hobbyist level tinkering can achieve.

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coderjames 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For the 2D version, you might not need very much custom. Use a regular pen plotter and use a pen with conductive ink. These both exist today, though personally as a hobbyist PCB designer, I can get 2-layer and 4-layer boards cheap enough from JLCPCB or Oshpark or PCB Unlimited that I don't bother trying to make them myself.

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jrmg 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I always thought conductive ink had too high a resistance to use to make PCBs. That’s not the case?

How do you attach the components to it?

	▲	dsign 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, conductive ink has too high resistance; at least the one that works on a basis of carbon; a "trace" can easily have kilo-Ohms, and the metal ink interface makes things worse. I remember reading some "Sputnik" magazines from the 1970s where Russian scientists were searching for the holy grail of a good conductor resin. I didn't understand at the time why they found the (concept of the) thing so valuable; but now I've got an inkling...

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vhab 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Bad Obsession Motorsport actually went this route, you can see their custom printer on their youtube[1] channel

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzrZoVKT8gM

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asdefghyk 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

wirewrap circuit construction would be more reliable. However high speed (if needed ) could be a problem ? from crosstalk.

	▲	fatnoah 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I worked at a no longer extant networking equipment manufacturer as an intern in college in the late 1990's. My role was to work on software for an in-development 45Gb network switch, and a bunch of the software I wrote ran on prototype boards. Since fabricating new boards took time and was expensive, a lot of work was done to make in situ modifications that involved an insane amount of wirewrapping. One member of the team did that all day, every day as their full time job, and I was always amazed by their ability to focus consistently at that level for so long.

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asdefghyk 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One maybe unrecognized problem, of breadboards is not so good for high speed digital circuits due to capacitance

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ZiiS 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For $2,500 the Carvera Air makes very nice 2 sided pcbs with solder mask. Though even in raw materials it is hard to match a finished board from China if you can wait a couple of months.

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wolvoleo 11 hours ago | parent [-]

In my experience it's a couple of weeks, not months from China.

	▲	ZiiS 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Depends how much you are happy to pay; but yes it has got faster.

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estimator7292 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My last job had a desktop CNC called Volterra I think. It would squeeze out conductive ink, bake it, drill holes, and lay down and reflow solder paste.

It was expensive and performed terribly.

I think there really isn't any good way to improve on breadboards. Breadboards, in fact, are the improvement. They're called breadboards because we used to literally drill pieces of wood and do wire-wrap construction on the other side.

Breadboards are good enough for the kind of prototyping they're for. Spring loaded contacts are about the best you can get for removable parts. The signal integrity isn't that bad at modest speeds.

In today's world, the next step up from a breadboard is custom PCBs. You can have a set of five shipped from China for the same price as a set of breadboards. There's no real need or reason for anything in between so long as PCB manufacturing is so disgustingly cheap and fast.