[ExI] Relays was Oil will never run out

Bryan Bishop kanzure at gmail.com
Wed Jul 2 21:33:09 UTC 2008


On Wednesday 02 July 2008, hkhenson wrote:
> At 11:51 AM 7/2/2008, Bryan Bishop wrote:
> >On Wednesday 02 July 2008, Damien Broderick wrote:
> > > At 01:14 PM 7/2/2008 -0500, Bryan wrote:
> > > > > Built circuit boards with surface mounted parts?
> > > >
> > > > Maybe?
> > >
> > > I don't think this is the sort of thing you can do inadvertently
> > > and then not be sure it happened. (But then I haven't built one.)
> >
> >I'm not sure if it's the same thing as breadboarding, or if it's the
> >same thing as wiring stuff up on a surface, etc. I tend to have this
> >terminological gap problem.
>
> Most PC boards these days are multi layer and covered with passive
> parts about the size of a millet seed and active parts with fine
> spacing (20 mills or less) on the leads.  Normally they are built by
> machines that stick the parts into tiny lumps of solder paste then
> the whole board is run though an oven to melt the solder.

I've certainly done my fair share of PCB boards.

> I have done built boards in the last few years--under a microscope of
> course.

I used to use some clamps to steady boards. Seemed to help.

> I don't know what the minimum labor force might be to build modern
> day electronics.  It's not hard for a small company to do it, but
> they have to depend on parts and services that employ hundreds to
> make PC boards and companies with tens of thousands or maybe millions
> for the people who build the integrated circuits.  And this is the
> most heavily automated industry there is.

In the likely case it's not going to look precisely the same as modern 
electronics. For instance, semiconductor manufacturing in the home is 
difficult unless you have very carefully calibrations on vacuum 
chambers and the CVD chambers and so on, and very carefully produced 
chemicals for the etching process etc. Easy alternatives might have to 
be explored. By easy I mean something that doesn't require a few ten 
thouand amps to purify silicon.

> I have done just about every task there is in the industry outside of
> semiconductor manufacturing, and I know what's involved there.  The
> day may come when the processes are amiable to a home workshop, but
> at the present it takes the full capacity of an advanced industrial
> civilization.

Arguably I'd point to the beginnings of the industry. The semiconductor 
manufacturing technology consisted of some UV lamps and giant lenses 
taken from photography equipment bought at local shops. There's a good 
reason why Canon still sells semiconductor fabrication equipment, I 
specifically recall some photolithography lenses that they manufacture. 
This is for the 1 micrometer to 50 nm range (or less now, but there 
were some limits to optical methods). I'd be happy getting 1 mm.

- Bryan
________________________________________
http://heybryan.org/



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