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SXSW: Imagine a Practical, Low-Cost Circuit Board Assembly System (Video)
SXSW Create is one of a handful of sub-shows at SXSW which don't require an expensive badge — it's maker-oriented and small, and a few blocks from the slicker parts of the convention. (The local ATX Hackerspace was there showing off robots and giving out soldering lessons and blinkies, without a single corporate pitch.) Under the same tent, I met with Jeff McAlvay, co-creator of Board Forge, which Jeff hopes will make small-run circuit board creation as easy and accessible as small-scale 3-D printing has become in the last few years. ("Think MakerBot for electronics.") The prototype hardware McAlvay had on hand looks -- in fact, is a 3-D printer, albeit one lower-slung than the ones that make plastic doo-dads. That's because the Board Forge's specialized task of assembling circuit boards requires only limited vertical movement. It's using the open-source OpenCV computer vision software and a tiny camera mounted on a movable head to accomplish the specialized task of selecting and placing components onto the boards. The tiny electronic components are lined up in strips on one side of the device, where that smart head can grab them for placement. The brains of the operation include an Arduino-family processor for basic controls, and a Raspberry Pi for the higher-level functions like computer vision. The projected cost for one of these machines — about $2000 — should put instant-gratification machine-aided circuit creation in reach of schools and serious hobbyists, but there's plenty of work before it's set for sale to the public; look for a Kickstarter project in the next few months.
So, inkjet a wax and asphaultum solution through a heated nozzel, touch gently with a few passes from a hot air blower, then dunk the whole thing in the etching bath.
Wait a preprogrammed amount of time, fish it out, then plunk it in hot soapy water, agitate, then hang up to dry.
(News for nerds: beeswax and asphaultum have been used as a deep etching mask for centuries, and is used to mask iron cutlery blades for acid etched artwork. Filtered mixtures of the stuff would lend themselves very well to existing 3d print systems, as it is both cheap, and reusable, with a low melting point. Copper etches much faster than iron, and the depth of etching is far shallower. The most expensive product involved would be the acid etchant itself, and let's face it, a strong solution of CLR will work just fine here, as would dollarstore knockoff HCl based toilet cleansing gel, and those are both pretty damned cheap.)
Unless you have some mysterious reason for insisting that the control electronics duplicate, rather than supplement, the ridiculously powerful, RAM-heavy, and massively-mass-storaged computer that you can buy for $200 and use for all kinds of neat stuff, is there a problem with AVRs?
If you are doing a circuit design(or even just downloading one from somebody who did) you presumably own a computer massively more powerful than any microcontroller or embedded system(not counting 'embedded' systems that are server gear with extended temperature ratings put in the same box as the device being controlled) ever made. That PC won't have many PWM outputs, and any DACs and ADCs it has will probably be horribly tweaked in favor of pleasing sound, since they'll be on the sound card; but it will otherwise have ridiculous power to spare.
Microcontrollers make excellent complements, since they have pitiful computational and RAM specs; but tend to be well supplied with PWMs and ADCs. Why reinvent the PC as part of the machine?