So How much money do you save if you buy each part separately and not in one of those ready kits
The kits contain professionally made PCB but what if you just buy blank PCB and make it yourself
So how much do you save by doing PCB’s yourself and ordering the parts separately?
dont know exactly, but i think its about 30% ?? Most expensive parts of a midibox are potis encoders and case stuff.
I would think that the kits from Mike and SmashTV are actually the cheapest way of building this. Certianly if you don’t have any expirience sourcing parts.
Yeh… If you already have a PCB etching rig, and IF you never make any mistakes, then it’s marginally cheaper…
I think one of my knobs costs more than a smashtv core.
pls dont try iron sh*t. when … go and take photosomething ones. you know what i mean. dont know the english translation for it now ^^
search google for “etching diy” or something like that.
Why I do etch on my own? its faster, i’m learning and i can build another nonmidibox pcbs on my one. One time you can etch your own layouts for some things like a button-pcb for your casefront.
I believe you are reccomending the photographic etching technique over the iron on method
To which I would agree.. I failed miserably over and over again with the iron-on stuff. Got it right the second time with the photographic stuff. Either way you are going to spend a chunk of money to get setup to etch AND DRILL your own PCB’s.
drilling is a job, but not a prob 
(if you have a dremel)
With LOTS of skill AND perfection the iron method is ok for little boards.
Well i´ve been etching PCB´s for 4 years now and i have all etching material. But the kits just seem sooo easy, because you don´t have to put every component one by one to the shopping cart 
when you order at reichelt.de you can search the forum for ready orderlists. you just have to click on the link and all the parts are beeing added.
Ok at this point it looks that making own DIN and DOUT module PCB´s is gonna be way more cheaper than buying them in kits because DIN and DOUT kits are like 15€ and the components are 7€