New kickstarter - Voltera - Print - Paste - and toast :) your prototype board

[edavid]

I get what this is and what it does, but please tell me why I should spend $2200 USD for a device that is so restricted? I can buy a large format V-Carve for half that and carve out the traces with the appropriate bit. Not only that, but I could use any size board I can get my hands on. Oh! And then I could switch bits and machine the case for the board. Yes, I get that I would lose the solder paste application and reflow ability, but is that worth the added expense and otherwise limited functionality? This seems like a solution looking for a problem.

There are some people who are never going to buy a CNC router, for various reasons (e.g. too noisy and messy for an office), but still want to make boards.  It's not for you (or me, too expensive), but I guess there were 300 people who were interested.  Note that they didn't pay $2200.

P.S. What router are you talking about?  V-Carve seems to be a software package.

[MarkS]

My point is that this single purpose machine costs 2x more than a multipurpose machine. I get its utility, but the price puts this out of the reach of most hobbyists. If you are doing work in a production environment, you'll probably have access to far more capable machines. Noise is a drawback to a CNC machine, but it can do so much more and for less, including making prototype PCBs of far larger sizes. I cannot see the justification of this machine.