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22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

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31–40 of 211 posts

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#31
post #24
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m constantly surprised how tech folks seem to undervalue the suburbs.

Most American suburbs are awful if you enjoy any sort of regular physical activity, and simply prefer to walk to the market instead of drive. They're amazing if you love sitting in traffic.

Sounds like they're also good if you want a garage to tinker in!

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#33
post #7

I am surprised semiconductor engineers called it impossible. A cutting edge chip, sure, but a few thousand transistors?

Impossible for a teenager. This isn't like your everyday "kid makes a software startup" stories. He had to source all the machines, go through all the obscure documentation, understand how to test his yield, etc. He built his own photolithography machine ffs. I can't imagine the dedication required to go through this and believe in yourself every step of the way.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#34
post #24
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m constantly surprised how tech folks seem to undervalue the suburbs.

Most American suburbs are awful if you enjoy any sort of regular physical activity, and simply prefer to walk to the market instead of drive. They're amazing if you love sitting in traffic.

I'm in a suburb. Not an expensive one. Downtown is a 20 minute drive in light traffic. Within a 10 minute walk there are office buildings, grocery stores, shopping mall, gyms, parks, hiking and biking trails, etc. There are many cities to choose from; some are better planned than others. Based on your comment I would guess that you've opted to live in one of the "cool" cities in America.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#35
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most American suburbs are awful if you enjoy any sort of regular physical activity, and simply prefer to walk to the market instead of drive. They're amazing if you love sitting in traffic.

I'm in a suburb. Not an expensive one. Downtown is a 20 minute drive in light traffic. Within a 10 minute walk there are office buildings, grocery stores, shopping mall, gyms, parks, hiking and biking trails, etc. There are many cities to choose from; some are better planned than others. Based on your comment I would guess that you've opted to live in one of the "cool" cities in America.

That you need to drive to downtown suggests you might not have much garage space after all?

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#36

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 $5…

May I ask how you do this, specifically? What machine do you use for injection molding, and how do you make the moulds? Very interested in doing this myself. (Also interested in specific recommendations for a desktop pick n place if anyone has some)

https://www.smallsmt.biz/products/

or any similar Shenzhen special. Buy bigger over smaller.

Buy, don't build. There will be a handful of recommendations for the Opulo Lumen/OpenPNP: avoid them. Avoid everything but ballscrew designs: you will spend an annoying amount of time trying to calibrate a belt-driven design and calibration will never stick.

Please, do not make the mistake I did: get something with CL feeders, make this investment. Drag feeders are not good - they are slow and the stylus will violently shake parts out of reels (or you'll spend time calibrating it to try and avoid this issue - don't waste the time.) Get something that can do 0201, even if you don't use it.

Ideally, get something that uses a separate, commodity host machine.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#37
post #14

If you are wondering what Sam Zeloof is up to these days: he founded Atomic Semi [1] with Jim Keller (yes, _that_ Jim Keller). [1] https://atomicsemi.com/

Looking at their careers page the typical salary is $100,000 – $170,000 for SF. Seems a little low for SF no? Is this an indication that they are not well funded or going to have issues finding top tier people?

Its low if theyre paying 100k for people with a couple years of experience, but for entry level hardware jobs, 100k is about right.

Ive been looking for almost 5 months for an entry level hardware job (preferably in SF, but willing to relocate anywhere), and 100k is about what Im looking for based on what Ive seen.

Some go as low as 85, and some start at 120, but 100k is pretty standard.

The salaries are not what they were in 2021

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a suburb. Not an expensive one. Downtown is a 20 minute drive in light traffic. Within a 10 minute walk there are office buildings, grocery stores, shopping mall, gyms, parks, hiking and biking trails, etc. There are many cities to choose from; some are better planned than others. Based on your comment I would guess that you've opted to live in one of the "cool" cities in America.

That you need to drive to downtown suggests you might not have much garage space after all?

[flagged]

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you need to drive to downtown suggests you might not have much garage space after all?

[flagged]

Your comment seems unnecessarily antagonistic.

Given whatever size of garage I have, being somewhere I can live without a car gives me more garage space, regardless of whether it's a suburb. If I want to maximize garage space given my choice of a car-free lifestyle, I would probably move to a suburb with a good train station, not one where "only 20 minutes' drive to downtown" is seen as the selling point. Those are subtly different kinds of places, in my experience, where most people are going to fill their garage space with cars.

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