Let’s say you’re secretly building the next great gadget in your garage. At one of the most fundamental levels, you’ll need a circuit board to tie all the electronics together. You could either build one by hand, soldering, etching and meticulously arranging tiny components yourself, or design a circuit board and pay a company to assemble it for you.
Board Forge is a machine that’ll assemble your circuit board designs using “a tiny camera mounted on a movable head to accomplish the specialized task of selecting and placing components onto the boards,” according to Slashdot. Board Forge’s creator, Jeff McAlvay, hopes to raise funding via Kickstarter and eventually sell the machines for around $2,000; future versions “will etch traces, apply solder paste, place components, cook, and test,” according to Board Forge’s site.
SXSW: Imagine a Practical, Low-Cost Circuit Board Assembly System (Video) [Slashdot]