As always, you folks are an incredible source of knowledge and wisdom. I genuinely appreciate the help.
Blueskull, thank you for the offer! That's wild, that someone on the board would live exactly there. I'm still hurting from having spent $150 on a saw I won't be using, so I don't think I'm going to buy anything new. Instead, I think I'm going to work at using the tools I already have. But i appreciate the offer, and if my circumstances change, I'll drop you a line. Thanks again.
MatthewEverett, cleaningOut - I'll check out pcbshopper and dirtypcbs. After spending all this cash and effort on equipment and supplies to make pcbs, if it turns out that I can buy them just as cheaply... well, sigh.
The blade gap on the bandsaw is large, around a quarter inch. But... hey! I own a 3D printer! Exactly the kind of job it's really good at doing.
Something else I'm thinking about is making a guide to fit on the base of the dremel workstation, putting a milling bit in the dremel and using that to cut pcbs. I would think it should yield a decent cut. Another project for the 3D printer.
So last Thursday I visited a couple friends of mine on their acreage. They're both getting on in age, he's had a heart attack and a quad bypass, and now uses a walker for anything outside their home. So they want to sell the acreage and buy a condo in Victoria, B.C. where they'll live out the remainder of their lives.
So, they're in 'dispose of all this junk' mode. His wife had a hewlett packard 2000 series laptop and an officejet 8500A multi-function printer, wasn't using them...
They drove home in my back seat.
The laptop isn't anything special; core i3 architecture from several years ago, 500Gb drive, 4Gb ram, 15" screen. But it's a good 'surf the web' machine, and having an extra computer available never hurt anyone.
Similarly, the officejet 8500A wouldn't be my choice of printers; I hate inkjets. And, the power brick that runs it had somehow gone missing. But it does have a scanner/copier function with an automatic document feeder, it will print on both sides of a sheet of paper, and it connects via wifi. So I found a cheap Chinese power supply on Amazon, complete with the funky HP patented plug. While I was there, I ordered some ink cartridges. The power supply showed up yesterday, the ink today... and after a ridiculous amount of ink spent cleaning the heads, it's up and working. Got the latest firmware installed on it, so hopefully it will behave itself.
The officejet might prove useful in making transparencies for making pcbs; people complain that the laser printers put out too thin an image, that the blacks are grey rather than black. Possibly the inkjet will do a better job.
Oh, and the other thing I purchased was a Wen rotary tool kit. Got the tool, a flexible extension, a bunch of missc. bits and fittings, all in a tidy black plastic case... cost me a grand total of $28. At that price, heck. You can't have too many rotary tools.
Take care, all - Charlie