Would you mind pointing me to something that explains what has happened in the last 5 years that made PCB design so much cheaper? It's quite surprising to read.
Years ago, if you wanted a small PCB manufactured, your only option was to deal directly with the board manufacturer and the minimum order was 100's or 1000's of boards. Prototyping a one-off hobbyist design was totally out of the question.
About 5 years ago a few startups figured out that if you played a large game of Tetris by combining the board designs of many hobbyists, you could submit the order as a single, giant PCB in a quantity of 10, or 5, or even 3. When the manufactured boards arrived, you break up the individual designs and mail them out individually to all of the hobbyists.
In context, this comment is actually quite hilarious.
Dave Jones (the guy who shoots EEVBlog) also does a podcast with Chris Gammell (who teaches Contextual Electronics). For years, Dave has been giving Chris shit over his fantasy of one day having a chip printer. Dave is certain this will never happen and absolutely delights in making fun of Chris.
But all joking aside, those two guys have done great things in making electronics as a hobby accessible.
