Status on building the largest PCB factory in the world on American soil 🇺🇸 crazy progress this past 1 week

In 1982, the US stood for 42% of worldwide circuit board manufacturing. Today its 4% Trust me, that's a big problem. From the 2025 Annual Report to Congress

Every robot, drone, satellite, and AI server starts with a circuit board. Builders should not have to send the design files for what comes next to China just to keep moving.

This week is less about testing and more about preparing everything for the 80/20 factory, which means days upon days of research on identifying and getting quotes from providers. The right approach, that no one else believes in the west, is still to copy China. Credible Chinese / Taiwanese will supply roughly 50% of the shortlist

The biggest mistake in American PCB manufacturing is also the advice almost everyone agrees on: Start with aerospace, defense, and other high-margin customers. Then “eventually” move downmarket. They never do. It’s copium. The correct strategy is bottom-up. Build a factory that learns how to manufacture commodity boards at scale, fast, and at a great price. Make cost discipline and throughput part of the company’s DNA from day one. Then move upmarket. Because here’s the thing: Fortune 100s, aerospace, and defense companies don’t want to pay 60x more for a circuit board. They do it because domestic capacity is scarce and they have no alternative. Build the best low-cost PCB factory in America and the high-end customers will come to you too. Commodity first. Scale first. Efficiency first. Tell me why I’m wrong.

liberal Waymo

Microscope has arrived, so crispy 😩🫰

Why the fuck is this book so costly and then 2x for used on eBay

Everything needed to attempt plating. Can’t do this at home though so need to find a fablab in NY 🤔🤔

The world's largest prototype board maker earns a 36% margin on five-board hobbyist orders and 2.8% on big production contracts. The tiny orders are 97% of its board profit. The whole empire runs on people ordering five boards at a time. Let that sink in.

America funded the robots. Nobody funded the boards they run on. I read JLCPCB’s IPO filing. Direct labor is 14% of what it costs them to make a board. The real trick is packing tens of thousands of orders a day onto the same panel. The playbook is public. The American company is not.

The fact that the largest on-demand PCB factory in the U.S. left X for Bluesky and Mastodon says almost everything you need to know about why we need American Copperworks 🇺🇸 @oshparky

Let’s shred some copper

The first factory will be called 80/20. You can manufacture 80% of the boards people need with 20% of the equipment. We’ll support the stuff everyone needs, most of the time. If you need something truly advanced or custom, you’ll have to go elsewhere. That constraint is the whole point.

American Copperworks will be AI and API native. Integrate us seamlessly into your software, into your AI workflow, let agents order from us. America should make what it invents, and we are removing all friction points in the funnel. Our goal is to manufacture 1M boards a month, this is how we achieve that.

AOI working and live! 💯 blue = plastic that shouldnt be there red = plastic is missing that should be there

American Copperworks wins because 1. easiest to use 2. fastest delivery 3. same price as China

People calling me crazy 😂 as an update im talking to two FabLabs this week, I need a place to be able to experiment with etching and plated-through-hole metallization that is not my bedroom

More stuff arriving! Hoping to finish the AOI code today so we can get back to the hardware