Hi Jay
I think superficially the routers are a great idea, they are VERY expensive, and you are going to get the same big problems with DSPTH as any non plating process will.They don't seem particularly speedy either, though they can drill your holes too.

There are some very small plants for making real PTH in house in small quantities, and I suspect your company could run to the cost of that. Most of the modern process chemicals, while not actually benign, are a hell of a lot safer than the old cyanide ones !

We don't do PTH ourselves yet, but we make nice 5-10 thou rule boards by hand in house, and I can turn out a new
board in under an hour with it.

You need a really top-notch hi-res laser printer though.

I wouldn't suggest it for a production run.

We are building a little NC drill for our boards with an old PC we have lying around and a $150 NC driver package. Very cheap. Except you need a damned good machine shop to build a decent drill to mount it all on. Backlash in the lead screws is a real killer.


Steve