Through hole plating

If contact rs is the through-hole plating method for their milled prototype boards I can say I tried those and they work pretty well. I'm not sure how stable they are over the years, but they claim they last long.

BTW, LPKF HQ is a few km from my workshop and my SMD placing vendor works for them as well.

Hope this helps, M

Just wanted to add that you need to watch current per via. Better combine several where you've got substantial currents, they can't handle as much as the normal via.

M

Your own posting is a good example of the need for shorter link text length. Every single one of them is corrupted by text wrapping in this news reader.

You probably shouldn't count on >70 characters getting through.

RL

legg wrote:

Rob, When I submitted the post, there was no indication that everything wasn't peachy. Google Groups (where I posted it) has had several hours of high latency this afternoon. It appears what they were doing was "improving" things yet again.

**Mangled links** seems to be what they added. 8-(

One more try:

I use

in China for my personal project boards, not that expensive in the scheme of things. There are many others around at competitive prices too.

I've got to agree. I don't know why anyone would bother making their own boards these days. If it's a simple board and you just have to have it in a few hours then fair enough. But don't bother with plating, soldering the feed- throughs yourself is good enough for a quick'n'dirty proto.

Dave.

[snip the lecture as irrelevent]

Mmmm. Just what I like to have happen - to be called a moron by proxy. That's *bound* to make me receptive to your post...

FWIW, the guy was reporting 100% success rate in terms of electrical connection, and 90% success in terms of fully-coated vias. It may be "a mess", it may just be a non-mainstream way of doing it.

Looks interesting, thanks.

Indeed, but I'm coming from the other direction. I'm sick and tired of sending off a board for production, then waiting the week or so for it to come back. Case in point: I recently took a week off work, had sent off my board (to PCB-pool) and was all set to work on it over my vacation. Board came back and in 10 minutes I realised I'd mirror'ed one of the module pinouts. There's no easy way to patch 100 pins on a small circuit board, so I had to send it off again - even with the ($$ $) quick turnaround, it still only got here on the Friday of my week's vacation. Sure - it's entirely my own fault for being careless, but I realised then that it wasn't the cost that was important to me, it was the turnaround time...

That's not correct. The wayback machine takes a snapshot of the images too, it's just so overloaded that fetching them is hit-and-miss. If I manage to get them all, I'll put up an attributed mirror. This is of course the link I originally referred to ("the original site") which you were claiming was never cached by the archive...

There's also the LPKF Contac-RS and MiniContac-RS (see

cemer if the "obfuscated" url doesn't scare you too much) but these are relatively expensive (for the home user, anyway). I've also found machines from t-tech and a simpler chinese plating system on Ebay

As with most things in this life, it's a matter of cost and benefit - and since these are subjective and particular to any individual, it's a personal choice. I'm exploring possibilities, that's all...

Simon

Having unconnected posts on the SAME subject scattered all over Usenet seems selfish to me. I'm sure many here will agree with me.

BTW, if you're going to post from Google, this is worth reading:

(Your blockquoting looks terrible after Google gets thru with it.)

They call me Mr. Tact. 8-)

I'll have to take your word for it. I remember graphite on boards as a PitA. I'm missing the *redeeming grace* part.

Notice how the link got borked by Google. See 1st link in this post.

Yeah. DJ and some of the other guys still DIY--but I think they all use the poke-a-tiny-wire-thru-and-solder-it-on-both-sides technique. Maybe we'll see some testament.

I haven't seen evidence of that yet but looking at the source of the page, it seems possible.

I'm willing to be convinced.

Just to quibble, I said that the makezine page wasn't archived. Reference to Markus' page didn't appear till I posted it.

I'm sure there are those whose software have problems displaying long links, and I'm sure *they* appreciate the abbreviated links.

As the vast majority of long links come thru just fine for me, I'd just as soon not have to do extra pageloads (prescreening shortened links), so I even when posters *do* include an (additional) shortened link,

*I* appreciate seeing the _original_ link. I'm sure many will agree with me. (For posterity as well: links to extinct short-URL services are testament to the folly of relying on those.)

Gotcha. *Motivation* is a Good Thing(tm) to include in a query.

Become convinced. The URL is

If Markus ever resurfaces, or if anyone knows his current page, I'd appreciate the URL...

Quoth I:

...in response to JeffM:

Just to quibble right back, the device was *pictured* on the makezine site, but I referenced the *original site*, ie: the site that the makezine site referenced, ie: Markus' site.

Simon.

Simon wrote: : Alternatively, anyone had any experience with the LPKF 'contac rs' or : 'miniContac rs' machines ? And how much were they ?

No experience with the above, but be warned against their ProConduct system which uses conductive polymer paste. The vias produced are OK when fresh (even seem to work at 4K in liquid He) but they seem to easily break at the slightest mechanical stress. In particular the cards made of thinner (like 0.8mm) substrates become unreliable when they age. There are not many jobs more frustrating and time-consuming than hunting for a faulty via which occassionally conducts and occassionally dies away.

Regards, Mikko

You usually just need prototype for a short period. I'd never used these for anything but prototype work.

Still, good feedback. I used this solution, yes, its good to know it gets unstable with time.

M