I had an idea and I'm curious what people's opinions are as to its feasibility and practicality.
Essentially using a 3D printer to print a small ABS plastic card that has thinly cut trenches for all of the circuitry and holes for components.
Then once it's printed, use a little bit of solder and fill in all the trenches for the circuits, drop in your components and solder them as well.
Obviously this isn't for large scale projects or extremely complex circuits, but under the use case of one-offs/ small projects I think it could work well?
You'd be surprised... in the design of a custom case with tons of buttons that I have built, it was easiest to create a custom "perfboard" so to speak with exact mm distance between buttons. I soldered all of them on (VERY carefully) and at worse lightly scarred in a few spots, but just minor warp no significant structural changes or real melting.
Although haven't tried it here, I'm assuming the same could be done here with lower-heat soldering and taking care to avoid direct contact
I have seen that and might invest in the future for it definitely, but as of now I don't really have a lot of time available and very rarely need to produce a PCB.
This was more sitting here thinking "how could I make an OK-ish PCB with that materials I have in front of me" type of thing
Totally separate from my other answer about "what's in front of me" thinking, I would say... cost. This process is using maybe 15 cents worth of ABS plastic and 25-50 cents of solder. Where else can you get a 40-65 cent PCB with 1 quantity manufacturing?
Prototype board is definitely good in some instances for sure. But this method reaps the benefit of a PCB, it can easily hold an ATTiny13 SMD sized microcontroller and really condense down the size of the chip as a whole
The problem with 3D printed perfboard is that you have to have your nozzle at just the right height above the bed or the plastic will fill in the tiny holes.
Another issue is, of course, solder melting the plastic.
This device is a parking assistant I've been using in the car for over two years. It holds a Nano, buzzer and a header block to which an ultrasonic sensor connects. On the underside I laid a grid of pegs between the thru-holes. The hookup wires are routed around the pegs.
