Sunset at the Start of Spring
When I left work last night, the sun was just above the horizon in the west, in the east the Sear Tower was a bright fire red, back in the office my latest pcb has been on the T-Tek machine for five hours and still has five hours to go. I could leave work then because I just flipped the board on to the second side.
This board was really too large a project to be T-Tek. The layout with over a hundred parts and five hundred holes was difficult. I had to spend at least three extra days in layout to make sure the board could be built reliable after being T-Tek. Mostly I had to make very complicated routing to avoid the use of extra via. All vias must be hand solder and hand solder vias are very prone to failure. When you consider my labor cost, it would of been cheaper to build a normal board and pay the two or three hundred dollars to have the board manufacture on the outside.
T-Tek is a must more useful tool for prototyping, when proof of concept in a short time is much more important than long term reliability.
This board was really too large a project to be T-Tek. The layout with over a hundred parts and five hundred holes was difficult. I had to spend at least three extra days in layout to make sure the board could be built reliable after being T-Tek. Mostly I had to make very complicated routing to avoid the use of extra via. All vias must be hand solder and hand solder vias are very prone to failure. When you consider my labor cost, it would of been cheaper to build a normal board and pay the two or three hundred dollars to have the board manufacture on the outside.
T-Tek is a must more useful tool for prototyping, when proof of concept in a short time is much more important than long term reliability.