Ive never seen a circuit board made like this

[Analog Kid]

Me, I might have done things my usual way, with point-to-point wiring under perfboard; actually kind of like what these guys had proposed at first, which wouldn't have been much more work than their PSB (printed solder board).



This technique tests my patience to the limit; basically wrapping wire around the protruding leads of through-hole parts (and constantly checking for shorts!). And yes, this does work (it's a display board with 7 seven-segment LEDs and their driver/counter chips).

[SteveThackery]

I've done something similar, but instead of extruding those solder beads to make the wires, I actually used stripped single core copper wires*, pre-shaped with pliers into the shape of the track, and held in place initially by little dabs of glue.  In fact I bet we've all done something similar to repair damaged tracks on a PCB. It also allows for decent soldered joints, unlike the extruded solder system.

When complete, a thick layer of conformal coating keeps the "tracks" in place.  It certainly takes longer to shape each "track" by hand compared to their solder printing machine, but of course you don't need to spend 18 months up front getting it to work.

*From CAT5 Cable.

[coppercone2]

just buy some thinner wire and i assure you that you won't need to check for shorts all the time.

a 28 gauge wire is good for at least a amp

ground and power wires can be made bigger

take a look at a modern PCB and see how thin the copper is and how small the traces are, you are torturing yourself with excessively heavy wire most likely


if your really frugal, get every gauge in 1 color and then get colored heat shrink to label the wire colors at the end. don't do it for a home code inspector but its one way to get the optimum prototyping setup at lower cost

this way, electrically you will have more similar performance to a proper PCB from your prototype, because your design will have a realistic distribution of conductor sizes in it, ranging from very thin to thick.

[Analog Kid]

I've done something similar, but instead of extruding those solder beads to make the wires, I actually used stripped single core copper wires*, pre-shaped with pliers into the shape of the track, and held in place initially by little dabs of glue.  In fact I bet we've all done something similar to repair damaged tracks on a PCB. It also allows for decent soldered joints, unlike the extruded solder system.

When complete, a thick layer of conformal coating keeps the "tracks" in place.  It certainly takes longer to shape each "track" by hand compared to their solder printing machine, but of course you don't need to spend 18 months up front getting it to work.

*From CAT5 Cable.

Funny, that's almost 'zactly what I did there; used salvaged CAT5 wire. Which turned out to be just a little bit too thick (24 AWG?) for comfort. Next time I'll use the 30 gauge wire-wrap wire I just got from Jameco (rainbow colors too!).
And I ended up semi-potting the whole thing in liquid epoxy to keep everything in place and prevent shorts in all those connections. It didn't work at first when I tested it before the epoxy cured (dielectric effect?), but worked fine afterwards.

[abeyer]

I've done something similar, but instead of extruding those solder beads to make the wires, I actually used stripped single core copper wires*, pre-shaped with pliers into the shape of the track, and held in place initially by little dabs of glue.  In fact I bet we've all done something similar to repair damaged tracks on a PCB. It also allows for decent soldered joints, unlike the extruded solder system.

Would be equally pointless... but perhaps fun, to do this with a cnc wire bender built for fine gauge wire. If it were a 3d one, you could even turn up "stubs" at each end to drop through holes as an anchor and via.

[Nominal Animal]

I'd really, really like to know why and how they arrived at such a convoluted/odd approach at prototyping, though.

[RoGeorge]

Probably the inspiration was from the method of making traces with solder+ultrasounds on a glass substrate:
https://cecas.clemson.edu/~jbostwi/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/wtcb2021jmp.pdf

[Analog Kid]

All in all, I think their unorthodox method is pretty kewl, especially for admitted electronics amateurs. And I'm not sure why it's coming in for so much criticism here.
After all, this is just a prototyping method, not a production one, so Binky isn't going to be bouncing down some dirt lane with solder traces falling off the PSB (printed solder board).

I am curious about one thing that hasn't been mentioned: what exactly is that thing mounted in the CNC machine that delivers the bead of molten solder? Never heard of such a thing before; it must be a tiny furnace/retort, with a reservoir of molten metal. Pretty cool device there.

[Nominal Animal]

I am curious about one thing that hasn't been mentioned: what exactly is that thing mounted in the CNC machine that delivers the bead of molten solder?

A 220°C hotend; similar to, but hotter than, 3D printer hotends.  You can see the roll of plumbing solder above it (looks to be 3mm in diameter, 99% Sn).

[tooki]

I am curious about one thing that hasn't been mentioned: what exactly is that thing mounted in the CNC machine that delivers the bead of molten solder?

A 220°C hotend; similar to, but hotter than, 3D printer hotends.  You can see the roll of plumbing solder above it (looks to be 3mm in diameter, 99% Sn).

3D printer hotends can go way hotter than that for more exotic plastics. Heck, 220C is only just above what is commonly used for PLA.

[Sacodepatatas]

3D printer hotends can go way hotter than that for more exotic plastics. Heck, 220C is only just above what is commonly used for PLA.

I often use 260C for printing using my pulltruded PET filament (my printer is an "El Cheapo" Anet A8).

[David Hess]

I have seen it done using something like conductive paint or epoxy.

I had a early Micronics (?) EISA 486 motherboard which used a Texas Instruments DIP cache module and discrete and programmable logic for the chipset that I think used some sort of printed PCB process.  Visible traces on the top and bottom of the board were very thin, like wire thin, ran horizontally and vertically, and crossed each other.

I'm concerned with the bonding to the substrate, and how well those eyelets get soldered.

Eyelets seem to be difficult to get right with any construction.  I have repaired too many where thermal expansion causes one side to separate from the soldered connection.

[coppercone2]

can it be that brass eyelet are used instead of copper?

[David Hess]

can it be that brass eyelet are used instead of copper?

I have seen them both fail in the same way.

[SiliconWizard]

3D printer hotends can go way hotter than that for more exotic plastics. Heck, 220C is only just above what is commonly used for PLA.

I often use 260C for printing using my pulltruded PET filament (my printer is an "El Cheapo" Anet A8).

Yes, for ABS you also need around 250°C. So that could be used with solder wire. Could be messy depending on the type of flux there is in the solder wire though, so probably needs proper selection.

[coppercone2]

can it be that brass eyelet are used instead of copper?

I have seen them both fail in the same way.

I have seen eyelets fail near a PCB mount transformer. I wonder if it was maybe the heat like your saying not the mass of the transformer.

I thought their reliability was supposed to be superb if they are staked properly and soldered well. I wonder if maybe they don't get soldered good because its a mechanical component stored like screws that might be more tarnished then usual (the board is usually fresher) and it might not get soldered well enough. People might not treat it like a connector


I thought it would be better then a via because its normal copper.... I noticed that plated copper is not that great.


But I did notice they don't flare out as much as I like, that is, the rolled side of the eyelet is always ALOT better then the staked side in terms of being solderable. Big lap joint vs weird cone thing. If you don't press them down enough they will still solder but its a far cry from a 'nice' lap joint like you get on top on the rolled side.


But it does make me feel alot better given how much  time and money  i spent in trying to learn how to do electroplate vias, rather then just forgetting about it and regresing to eyelets haha




Did you ever see a turret terminal go bad? They are staked like eyelets. Not sure I ever ran into that, oddly enough. Could it be that people don't mess around with them, and stake them with the proper tools, wheras with eyelets they get creative with a center punch to save on a die? Or am I just lucky ? Because when I started with eyelets, I used my own BS tools to press them. When I got turret terminals, I thought that its pretty specific so I got all the right tools. If you try to get cheap with the, its easy to damage them.

could it just be half assed staking? The tools are pretty expensive. I can totally see factory managers trying to hack that cost. Like zero doubt about it. 

[David Hess]

Did you ever see a turret terminal go bad? They are staked like eyelets. Not sure I ever ran into that, oddly enough. Could it be that people don't mess around with them, and stake them with the proper tools, wheras with eyelets they get creative with a center punch to save on a die? Or am I just lucky ? Because when I started with eyelets, I used my own BS tools to press them. When I got turret terminals, I thought that its pretty specific so I got all the right tools. If you try to get cheap with the, its easy to damage them.

could it just be half assed staking? The tools are pretty expensive. I can totally see factory managers trying to hack that cost. Like zero doubt about it. 

I have never seen a turret terminal fail.

The eyelet failures all seem to be caused by their thermal coefficient of expansion not matching FR4, so heat cycles make it worse.  Maybe the difference is that turrets are not hollow?  Although I do not know why that would help.

A few times I have seen plated through holes fail in the same way.

[tooki]

3D printer hotends can go way hotter than that for more exotic plastics. Heck, 220C is only just above what is commonly used for PLA.

I often use 260C for printing using my pulltruded PET filament (my printer is an "El Cheapo" Anet A8).

Yes, for ABS you also need around 250°C. So that could be used with solder wire. Could be messy depending on the type of flux there is in the solder wire though, so probably needs proper selection.

In the video they mention that they are using solder wire without a flux core. I’m guessing that they tried regular flux-core solder and found it to cause some sort of problems.

[coppercone2]

Did you ever see a turret terminal go bad? They are staked like eyelets. Not sure I ever ran into that, oddly enough. Could it be that people don't mess around with them, and stake them with the proper tools, wheras with eyelets they get creative with a center punch to save on a die? Or am I just lucky ? Because when I started with eyelets, I used my own BS tools to press them. When I got turret terminals, I thought that its pretty specific so I got all the right tools. If you try to get cheap with the, its easy to damage them.

could it just be half assed staking? The tools are pretty expensive. I can totally see factory managers trying to hack that cost. Like zero doubt about it. 

I have never seen a turret terminal fail.

The eyelet failures all seem to be caused by their thermal coefficient of expansion not matching FR4, so heat cycles make it worse.  Maybe the difference is that turrets are not hollow?  Although I do not know why that would help.

A few times I have seen plated through holes fail in the same way.

I also never really see those screw studs fail. They are often staked and soldered on older equipment, and I still recommend doing it on new stuff, its a higher quality bond then solder attach. They are kind of hollow. But not as flimsy as a eyelet.

The solder on screw studs are either plated steel or brass. Not sure if I have run into aluminum ones that are soldered to the pCB. MAYBE some weird gear like hughes has this construction with aluminum (I think they like it), but its rare to run into it. 

The turret IS usually partially hollow in the base, I have not seen pure deformed ones (like pump shaft)


I kind of wonder if there is some improper installations. Like if you forget the eyelet, so you solder it in, THEN stake it, because their kind of easy to have fall out of the board etc... a manufacturing hack

[Nominal Animal]

Nik and Richard of Bad Obsession Motorsport have released the Howie Did It -version, which does explain a bit more about it:

[jpanhalt]

Thirty minutes of a 3D machine going back and forth.  Did the solder stick well to the board?  Were junctions to rivets electrically secure?

The original version is shown as a bird's nest in a box, so I assume the answers to those questions are now yes, but I would like to see them demonstrated.

[moffy]

For guys that say they don't know electronics, by the end, they sure used a lot of custom assemblies including the custom hot end heater control. Quite decent stuff, but to be using Mach3, which needs a printer port, and the software lengths they went to, to create the PCB layout, sliced then hand edited the GCode for  a 1 off prototype, let alone developing a truly unique but time consuming prototype PCB system, the effort expended for the result is astronomical, but also both amusing and entertaining. Would never attempt it but for some perverse reason I am glad they succeeded and posted the video.

[Nominal Animal]

The original version is shown as a bird's nest in a box

Once again, it is just a prototyping tool, not manufacturing, or anything to be actually used while Binky is moving.  They have said they'll get a PCB made as soon as they're happy with the layout (of the components, not of the traces).

Would never attempt it but for some perverse reason I am glad they succeeded and posted the video.

Same here.

The Inkscape to DXF to Slic3r path is particularly funny, because SVG paths are trivial to convert to Gcode: path data consists of single-character commands followed by numeric coordinates.  (Curves you need to interpolate and approximate with line segments; the hard part there is the algorithm optimizing the line segments used.  Entire academic papers have been written on that subject.)

[jpanhalt]

They have said they'll get a PCB made as soon as they're happy with the layout (of the components, not of the traces.

Isn't that what the simplest CAD for electronics allow us to do?

I didn't listen to every minute of the audio, but failed to hear that disclaimer.  If it is being proposed as a "new way," then it's fair to ask them to demonstrate how well it works regardless of whether they plan to use it.  Maybe someone skilled at EtchASketch could make a video of that "new way" to design a PCB?

[Nominal Animal]

They have said they'll get a PCB made as soon as they're happy with the layout (of the components, not of the traces.

Isn't that what the simplest CAD for electronics allow us to do?

No.  Getting something to work via the trial and error method –– iterative prototyping, if you will –– is quite different to proper design using proper tools.

If it is being proposed as a "new way," then it's fair to ask them to demonstrate how well it works regardless of whether they plan to use it.

New way to do iterative prototyping, yes.  They've already demonstrated it works.

"New" does not necessarily mean "better".  It's easy for you to rag on them for doing things in a way that to you feels stupid, but let's face it: none of what they do is intended as a guide for others to follow.  They just document their own shenanigans.  They're motorsport enthusiasts, not angry pixie wranglers.  The entire idea of Binky –– stuffing the running gear of a Celica into a Mini –– is similarly silly, done not to get something better, but to see if an outrageous idea actually works.

I don't understand how difficult this is to understand for some.  Perhaps you have never done anything outrageous or silly, and seeing someone else do so, and get funded by patrons who don't even get a regular publishing schedule in turn, much less useful information, just entertainment, offends your sensibilities.  If so, I suggest you too try it: it's actually quite liberating to play, even as an "adult".