22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)
It really is wild what you can do in your garage these days. Since the early 2010’s there has been a true revolution in this space that has only accelerated over the last few years. I have an injection molding machine that I built in my garage for less than $1500 USD that has a 3 cubic inch injection volume, able to make a large variety of plastic components at small production scale using a mold I printed from my $500 USD resin printer. A guy I met at the maker space has a literal pick and place and wave soldering machine in his garage and he is etching wafers on his desktop CNC. Hardware has never been more accessible.<p>Hardware is still really hard. But it’s definitely something someone with a software salary can bootstrap in their garage these days. Especially because I can go to JLCPCB and get some reasonably complex fully assembled prototype boards shipped to me in a week or two for $5-20 USD per unit. Ridiculously nice