GoKawiil
Tech News
Nikkei Asia reports that PC and PCB industry executives are warning of severe printed circuit board shortages, with some PCB orders now taking up to 30 months to fulfill and new orders not completed until late 2028. A Taiwanese PC maker told Nikkei that costs for copper clad laminates, a key PCB material, have risen at least 12-fold since July, while one major CCL supplier said its order book is already full.
A Massachusetts-based company has publicly revealed The Grid, a factory-scale robotic system it has operated for five years that manufactures printed circuit boards without per-design changeovers. Instead of a fixed assembly line, levitating movers carry boards between machines for solder paste printing, part placement, reflow, soldering and inspection, with AI and optimization software scheduling production. The company says customers including a major EV maker, a top AI lab and other large tech firms already use the system for low-volume and prototype board runs.
Wallhack's M-001 mouse exposes its PCB and battery through an open bottom frame instead of a solid shell, using the circuit board itself as a structural element. The mouse features a spring-loaded, click-to-eject battery system similar to SD card or Switch cartridge mechanisms, but as a result lacks a USB-C port and works only as a 2.4G wireless device.
Organizers of Hack the North, Canada's largest hackathon, replaced the traditional cardstock name tag with a custom hardware badge featuring an LED display, buttons, audio and wireless radio that attendees could fully program. The project, pitched eight months earlier, went through four hardware iterations before reaching a final production run of 1,750 units, with the design, firmware and an emulator all released as open source.
OKI Circuit Technology announced it has developed 124-layer printed circuit board technology for wafer inspection equipment used with next-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM) found in AI semiconductors, a roughly 15% increase over its previous 108-layer design. The company says it achieved this within the existing 7.6mm thickness limit by creating ultra-thin materials, handling tools, and a proprietary automated transport system. OTC aims to establish mass production of the technology by October 2025 at its Joetsu Plant in Niigata Prefecture.
Glorious has released the GMMK Eternal, a wired mechanical gaming keyboard with a 96-percent layout that squeezes a numberpad and full function row into a compact frame. It ships in black with hot-swappable Fox MX linear switches, ABS double-shot keycaps, RGB backlighting, and three layers of internal sound dampening, priced at $99.99.
A hobbyist asked the Fable 5 AI tool to design a printed circuit board pairing a Raspberry Pi Pico 2350 with a GDEY0154D67-FL04 e-ink display, four buttons, and exposed I2C and GPIO pins, using only a single plain-English prompt. Unlike an earlier attempt with Claude Opus 4.8 that botched component orientation and routing, Fable 5 worked unsupervised for a few hours and produced a completed 31.8 x 37.32mm four-layer schematic and layout via KiCad's MCP integration, with no manual edits or checks from the designer before manufacturing.
A developer designed a credit-card-sized PCB business card featuring an NFC chip that opens his website when tapped and a red LED that lights up on a printed Charizard's tail, powered entirely by the phone's own NFC radio field rather than any onboard battery. He had to write a custom Core NFC app for iPhone because standard NFC apps couldn't write to the blank NTAG I2C Plus chip he used, so his app sends the chip's native write commands directly.
TecLab modified a Galax RTX 5090 D HOF OC LAB XOC by bypassing its 16-pin power connectors entirely, soldering wires straight to the PCB's power traces and replacing the stock cooling with an industrial water cooler. Power meter readings suggested the card was drawing roughly 600W, well within the card's 2,000W custom BIOS limit, though final temperatures were not disclosed. The team clarified the stunt was a sarcastic jab at Nvidia rather than a genuine repair method for regular users.
Taoyuan prosecutors raided Unimicron Technology's headquarters and a plant, questioning 14 staff over allegations the company relabeled China-manufactured circuit boards as Taiwan-origin products. Several executives were released on bail ranging from NT$300,000 to NT$15 million, and the investigation into possible forgery and false origin-marking continues.
A hobbyist designed a PCB business card that uses an NFC chip's energy-harvesting capability to power 21 LEDs and an ATtiny412 microcontroller, all without a battery. Tapping the card against a phone triggers an LED animation, drawing power solely from the phone's NFC field via chips like the NXP NTAG I2C Plus or STMicro ST25DV-KC that can route excess harvested voltage to external components. The creator built the project in about three months as a way to learn KiCad, and has published the full design files publicly.