This 22-year-old builds chips in his parents\u2019 garage

It's even more of a CA problem. My favorite is how it's illegal to use 100 or even 99% isopropyl alcohol there. You're seriously supposed to cut it to 80% (or something like that) or less with water or acetone. They actually fine companies for selling high grade isopropyl alcohol there too. Clearly all other problems been solved.

Sounds bizarre. Analytical grade isopropyl alcohol has to be 99% pure (or better), and chemical supply companies have to be able to ship it to chemical laboratories or fine chemical manufacturing plants. What you local pharmacist can sell over the counter may be more restricted.

Are you sure that you know what you are talking about?

How can he connect it? Did he get a wire bond machine from ebay too?

The wire bond machines have always been the part of the process that I find most impressive, because they combine precision with fast moving parts.

Yeah, I do.

top matchs are all fines or settlements for selling standard products for industry in the shithole known as CA

You mean like pick and place machines? They may not have quite as much accuracy, but they are certainly in the same ball park. I see mentions of 0.001" or 25 um. How accurate are wire bonding machines? I see one mention of 2.5 um. So maybe 10x?

Pick and Place has to maintain these numbers over distances ranging towards a meter. Wire bonding only needs to operate over a range of a cm or so. I know wire bonding is very fast, but for pick and place the long distance and the weight of the object being placed is much more in some cases. Handling a wide range of sizes is not easy either. I wonder just how long they maintain these specs as they wear?

I find it interesting to watch a pick and place operate. One I saw had multiple heads so multiple pieces could be picked up with less movement while being placed.

A manually operated wire bonder doesn't look any different from a fancy optical microscope. I was recently told quite a bit of this work is still done by hand. The one I saw had no wire instaled, so I didn't get to play with it for real.