This site seems to simulate industrial conditions adequately:

http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/2...en_art.htm

This toy may come in handy as well:

http://hans-w.com/surfacem.htm

I know it's not going to be easy. I easily expect failure rate of about 75% and I know there will be a lot of problems underway but where would all the fun be if it wasn't challenging? I'm not sure what the layout of the final application will be but I'm quite ready to try making 4-layer PCBs (there was a great post about them here a few months ago) with solid GND and VCC planes. Besides, I'm going to use the UARTs and the Ethernet adapter, not the 6 paralell ports so I won't have to decouple -each- pin.

As long as I'm able to achieve proper quality PCBs, with enough patience the rest is just matter of skill and knowledge and these just come with time...