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Comment by foldr | Hacker News Reader

You can get simple two layer PCBs made for virtually nothing these days (even at low volumes). There's no cost-related reason to avoid using a PCB. You'll probably save money overall by being able to use cheaper SMD components.

You don't need any special tooling to solder SMD components, either. A temperature controlled soldering iron and a cheap hot air station are perfectly sufficient.

To make this a bit more concrete, consider that you can get 10 custom two-layer PCBs made for $2: https://cart.jlcpcb.com/quote?orderType=1&stencilWidth=100&s...

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A chinese 5x run of a two-layer PCB from JLC is $13 incl shipping to Sweden, and takes 3-4 weeks for mfg and delivery.[0]

You can speed it up a bit by going with a local mfg like Svensk Elektronikproduktion, who charges $154 but "only" takes ~2 weeks.[1]

Or you can head down to Kjell&co, pick up a few breadboards for $10[2] or a perfboard for $8[3], and be home again in 20 minutes.

Which do you think is more approachable for hobbyists? Oh, and you'll probably be able to pick up most through-hole components you want during the same trip, while SMD stuff usually needs to be ordered online.

> You don't need any special tooling to solder SMD components, either. A temperature controlled soldering iron and a cheap hot air station are perfectly sufficient.

I'd say a hot air station qualifies as special tooling. But disregarding that, while I can agree for passive components, even tiny SMD MCUs tend to have their legs packed close enough that solder bridges are practically inevitable for beginners.

[0]: https://cart.jlcpcb.com/quote, remember to add shipping and disregard the "special offer" garbage that only applies to your first order

[1]: http://www.svenskelektronikproduktion.se/en/webshop/prototyp..., remember to add shipping cost and add the 25% VAT

[2]: https://www.kjell.com/se/produkter/el-verktyg/elektronik/ele...

[3]: https://www.kjell.com/se/produkter/el-verktyg/elektronik/mon...

Manufacturing with JLC only takes a day or two. Delivery speed depends on which courier you choose. I’m in London and often get boards within a week via DHL, or 2 weeks with the cheaper shipping option.

Breadboards are mostly useless these days because very few components of interest are through-hole and many circuits don’t work at all on breadboards (e.g. switching regulators). I’m a hobbyist and virtually never use breadboards. If you just want to play around with simple circuits then sure, use a breadboard. But you are really missing out if you don't take advantage of cheap PCB manufacturing and the enormous range of amazing SMD components.

There’s nothing “special” about a hot air station. I paid £35 for mine and it works fine.

It's easy to learn how to solder SMD components. Beginners will screw it up, but that's the whole point of being a beginner, right? Solder bridges are very easy to fix with flux.

>and disregard the "special offer" garbage that only applies to your first order

It doesn't only apply to your first order. I've ordered at the $2 price many times. In any case, there are many Chinese PCB fabs of approximately equivalent quality, and you can almost always find one that has a promotional rate of some kind.

so 100x100mm pcb, 2 layers, x5, manufacturing costs - £1.56 12-16 business day delivery - £4.18 7-9 days - £9.25 4-6 dhl standard - £15.58

I think 30pcs protoboard for £9.90 with next day delivery from amazon still beats the custom made pcbs. And I don't need to spend time making sure my pcb design is 100% bug free...

Again, speaking from the hobbyist point of view.

I’m also speaking from the hobbyist point of view. There’s obviously nothing wrong with using protoboard if it works for you. Here’s why I don’t.

First, virtually none of the components I want to use are available in DIP packages. E.g., there are many great, very cheap, ARM Cortex microcontrollers that just don’t come in DIP packages.

Second, I have fewer problems with mistakes when I use PCBs. The EDA software checks that my board matches my schematic, so I only have to worry about errors in my schematic. And it’s not that difficult to make small corrections to a PCB with bodge wires if one or two connections are wrong. I’ve certainly made PCBs with errors, but I’ve never made one with so many errors that it was entirely unusable.

Third, the end result is a nice, neat, durable PCB, rather than an ugly tangle of wires. And other people can easily make one using your gerbers.

Fourth, you can use switching regulators and other layout-sensitive components.

For these reasons, I’d encourage any hobbyist to take advantage of the incredible service provided by Chinese PCB fabs. You can do so much more with a custom PCB than you can with protoboard.

To be fair - you're already in advanced stages, when you're looking into ARM MCUs.

PIC10F is $0.55 at Mouser. You can make a programmer for it with an USB-RS232 cable and few other cheap components. That is what I call beginner cheap. Even assembler for it is dead simple.

Even for PIC and Atmel, you have much more choice if you're ok with QFN and TSOP packages.

The ARM microcontrollers aren't actually so much harder to use than the Atmel ones. I remember thinking that it was going to be much harder the first time I tried it, but if you stick with one of the popular ranges (e.g. STM), then the dev tools are good and there's lots of help available online.

Don’t you need 12V VPP/MCLR line for PIC?

I don't remember. Unused them in automotive applications, so they might need them.

> Delivery speed depends on which courier you choose. I’m in London and often get boards within a week via DHL, or 2 weeks with the cheaper shipping option.

So, even further from "dirt cheap". And it's still not even in the same ballpark as going down to the store.

> If you just want to play around with simple circuits then sure, use a breadboard.

And what do you think beginners are going to do? Of course there will usually come a time where you need a PCB for something, but the longer that can be delayed, the more likely that they'll actually get past the hurdle.

> There’s nothing “special” about a hot air station.

It's another thing to buy, another thing to need to store somewhere, and another skill to learn.

I'm not saying it isn't valuable, but there is also value in a gradual learning curve.

> It's easy to learn how to solder SMD components. Beginners will screw it up, but that's the whole point of being a beginner, right?

See above.

> It doesn't only apply to your first order. I've ordered at the $2 price many times.

That hasn't been my experience.

The $2 offers are time-limited. They have nothing to do with how many orders you've already made. I've made lots of orders with JLC and I can still sign into my account and get the $2 rate. You've also made orders with them, it seems. Are you saying that you don't get the $2 rate if you sign in?

I think where we disagree is that you think that beginners should delay using PCBs, where as I think that the sooner they move to using PCBs the better. I certainly regret that I delayed doing this myself.

100% agreed. I wasted a lot of time years ago making crappy homebrew perf-circuits, before just getting comfortable with KiCAD.

Regarding the delay.. I find it's not so bad because I'm juggling a few projects, so I always have one on order, and tackle other things while I wait. It's not like your entire hobby career is going to end in a month.

Regarding $2 JLC orders, my experience has been it's always available once per order, for a 2-layer <100mm x 100mm. Definitely have gotten that discount many times.

We're talking about casual beginners, which is not the same as beginner.

I started my career in Lithuania, where a student will earn no more than a few hundred eur. JLC delivers a custom board for 7Eur within a MONTH! For 7eur I can get a perfboard, ATTiny2313 and a bunch of components and make a thing... in about 4 hours.

I used to make CAN interface boards without SMD and with tools that cost me roughly 20Eur in total. Never needed a hot air station - so your claim that it's nothing special is complete delusion of reality. I couldn't even afford a breadboard... not to mention specialist MCU programmer.

How do you use perfboards? I never managed to get the wires in the same holes as the component's leg, it was such a hassle that it was literally easier to make SMD PCBs with a 3D printer than to solder on a perfboard.

You're telling the chap who couldn't afford a breadboard to use a 3D printer.

I'm telling the chap who couldn't afford a breadboard that I find soldering perfboard very hard.

The wires go through the holes next to the pin, not into the same hole. There's a million tutorials and examples online.

And you go the same route - cost and accessibility have nothing to do with "how easy". How would some beginner in a country with $300 average monthly income be able to 3d print stuff?

Advocating for SMD only is exclusionary delusional elitism, until working with SMDs becomes completely financially trivial for the majority of the world's would be electronics engineers.

Next to the pin? Are these boards were adjacent pins are connected? Mine are singles.

> How would some beginner in a country with $300 average monthly income be able to 3d print stuff?

I am from (and live in) such a country, you just save up a lot. Sure, it's not a disposable device, but it's not unobtainable.

1. You can solder together the copper hole frames or stretch a wire and attach it to the holes. It's less tricky than trying to solder sub millimeter SMD contact with a 3mm point soldering tip

2. "Save up a lot" - that's an obstacle that prevents a lot of people from realising that they can create beautiful things. And that is literally the reason why I am vehemently opposed moving away from through hole logic components. Lower barriers to entry = richer world full of beautiful things.

Wirewrap is underrated. Its definitely tedious, but its solder-free and surprisingly reliable.

Its more expensive than soldering however: wire-wraps are best on header-pin posts, not on the ICs directly. So you should buy sockets-to-wirewrap posts if you plan to wire-wrap. You can wire-wrap on the IC directly, but its definitely not as reliable so I can't recommend the practice.

If we're talking about these small designs with only a dozen or two connections, wire-wrap is more than sufficient. Besides, you can still largely use a soldered Veroboard for most of your design, and just use the occasional wire-wrap for a harder to handle point-to-point connection.

Some beginner tutorials:

* https://hackaday.com/2014/12/18/wire-wrap-101/

* https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/working-with-wire/how-t...

I think having a few wire-wrap tools will help out a low-cost hobbyist. I'd estimate $50 in various parts (wire-wrap wire, a few dedicated wire-wrap sockets), but its largely "compatible" with soldering and DIP components. (Works with perfboard, veroboard, etc. etc. and everything you're soldering with)

You’re supposed to insert wires on adjacent holes and bridge together. Harder than glueing an SSOP and running wires to it though.

>Never needed a hot air station - so your claim that it's nothing special is complete delusion of reality.

I think you're going a bit over the top with the rhetoric there. Hot air stations don't cost more than soldering irons. I bought mine new for £35. I'm not saying that everyone in the world can easily afford a hot air station. But it's wrong to characterize it as some kind of exotic, highly expensive piece of equipment just because you didn't happen to own one.

You can also just use a cheap toaster oven (though that makes rework more difficult).

>> you'll probably be able to pick up most through-hole components you want during the same trip

Wait, you can buy discrete electronics components in a physical store?

Sure. Here's one in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.9034553,-2.0801054,3a,41y,...

Kjell (my example from earlier) has physical stores throughout Sweden. Their offerings aren't super deep, but they have plenty of kits and common parts to get started with.

Yep. I can go to a store and get literally everything to build a smart lights control system for my mother's apartment - in Vilnius, Lithuania.

https://www.lemona.lt/?page=item&i_id=60796

The irony - I cannot do the same in NYC, but the components that I can buy online are cheaper here.

I'm able to at Microcenter here in the USA.

Picked me up a cheap oscilloscope too.

I do love Microcenter, but the one in my hometown I've never seen bare components. Actually nothing hobby-centric really at all, not even breakout boards or small modules.

This largely ignores the reality in much of the world outside North America, Europe, and some parts of Asia.

> You can get simple two layer PCBs made for virtually nothing

Sure you can produce them in Shenzhen for virtually nothing but try getting it shipped to Cartagena, Colombia, or Maxixe, Mozambique and then tell me how cheap they get.

> A temperature controlled soldering iron and a cheap hot air station

That is a 'cheap' under $100 setup in a lot of places, but $100 is also the monthly paycheck for a lot of people. Compare that with a $10 soldering iron and honestly consider how are they equivalent outside a developed country.

>try getting it shipped to Cartagena, Colombia, or Maxixe, Mozambique and then tell me how cheap they get.

Sure, but components and all of your other equipment also have to be shipped.

>That is a 'cheap' under $100 setup in a lot of places, but $100 is also the monthly paycheck for a lot of people.

I'm fully aware of that, but you at least need a decent soldering iron whatever kind of components you're using. The hot air station is optional if you avoid QFN. These days you only save a little by getting a non-temperature-controlled iron, and it's a massive reduction in utility.

> Sure, but components and all of your other equipment also have to be shipped.

Those are not custom parts, they are shipped in bulk.

> but you at least need a decent soldering iron

There are people out there who cannot afford to _need_ a $40 temperature controlled soldering iron, and irrespective of the lottery of where they were born in the world, they still have an interest in (and often a need to repair) electronics.

The industry trend of ending dip package options is inevitable but it also makes things harder for many makers across developing countries.

> Those are not custom parts, they are shipped in bulk.

Not if no one else in Mozambique wants those parts.

You don't need to go outside of EU to get lack of availability of fast deliveries.

I'm volunteering in a school in Rural VA, and about half our students couldn't afford a class where we had to pay $0.20 per circuit we make.

Most of them can't afford the $20 class fee, and we waive it and make do somehow anyways.

That reflects my childhood. HN is full of sheltered silver-spoon kids, or to use the current vernacular, unacknowledged class privilege.

Give me a break. I couldn't afford to be an electronics hobbyist when I was a kid either. The only question here is over whether you actually save any money by using through-hole components. Only the madness of the internet could turn this discussion into a debate about "surface mount privilege".

By focusing only on the transition away from through-hole you're missing the fact that everything has got vastly less costly. Temperature controlled irons are much cheaper than they used to be. High quality PCBs are ridiculously cheap. You can buy a microcontroller for $1 that's more powerful than an 80s home computer. If you have a limited budget, you want to be doing electronics now, not in the 1980s.

I have every sympathy for kids around the world who can't afford to pursue their hobbies, but electronics is more affordable and accessible than it's ever been.

>I'm volunteering in a school in Rural VA, and about half our students couldn't afford a class where we had to pay $0.20 per circuit we make.

If you're ordering for an entire series of classes, then you could probably get the cost of each individual PCB under $0.20. It would take some forward planning, but it's doable.

In general, it's common for kids to have no money. (I had no money when I was a kid.) If you are doing electronics on an extreme budget then naturally you'll just have to use whatever equipment you can get hold of. But PCBs are really really really cheap. If you cannot afford PCBs you probably can't afford lots of other things that you need.

That's not to say that you should be using PCBs. I have no experience teaching kids electronics.

I would agree that it's easier than it used to be and easier than it might seem, but for an absolute beginner it requires several more skill sets to be able to get started with.

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