Hi Richard,

Who was running your LPKF machine? Did they buy a used machine off of eBay and try to write their own custom software for it? Were they using Black and Decker drill bits as endmills? Are they able to feed and clean themselves unassisted?

I've made a number of boards with my machine over the past couple of years. I don't make a board every day, but I've made a couple of dozen or so in two years, and I've never had a tool break, not a drill bit, not a universal bit, not an end mill, nothing. I've never tried to get down to the specified limits of 0.004" traces with 0.004" spaces, but I have made several boards with 0.012" pads separated by 0.008" spaces, and have had absolutely no problems doing so.

Moreover, I have no idea what you think constitutes a state-of-the-art board fabrication facility, but I can tell you this much with absolute certainty. If your people have a truely state of the art board shop, a full fledged wet-process board line with reversing pulse plating supplies (which they must have to make the holes you claim, and this even if they're using laser etching instead of acid etching to cut the copper features), then your people are spending more complying with EPA regulations to dispose of their waste than I spend on my boards. Of course, if they really believe that spending many hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment (you did say "state of the art," right?) to produce "three or four boards," (I'm guessing what, per day? per month?), costs less than what I spend, then maybe I do understand why they couldn't get their LPKF machine to work. That whole point-and-click-mouse tecnology can be a real brain twister.

Really, I don't know who was running your LPKF machine, but I wouldn't stand at the urinal next to them, if you know what I mean. If they managed to get that poor a performance out of an LPKF machine, they must have wet shoes and rusty zippers.