Just looking for basic glassware, bunsen, distillation, and stir plate for working with simple stuff related to circuit board etching, tinning, through hole plating, and some reverse engineering stuff like dissolving epoxy chip packaging for die shots. I’d like to be able to shape some glass. Above all, I’m looking for cheap stuff that is barely adequate in the few hundred dollars class total. Like I have no issues hacking a thrift store hotplate with a rare earth magnet on a small motor. Are there any cheap options to stay safe and functional?
Your local methlab, perhaps?
Maybe start here
With little knowledge beyond high school chemistry the main factor is accuracy. Less you care the cheaper it gets.
I’m old enough to remember chemistry sets and they kind of don’t exist any more. Anyway the stuff for making PCB’s overlaps only slightly.
You probably want to first gain some understanding of the stuff you are trying to do, before messing with expensive dangerous chemicals and all that. I like Ken Shiriff’s reverse engineering blog righto.com and maybe you can follow links from there.
I’ve always been told through hole plating is quite difficult. Make some single sided boards first, then double sided using vias to connect stuff across the two sides, before pursuing PTH. But I think home PCB’s aren’t really a thing any more either, at least for digital circuits. You can get super cheap board fab from JLPCB or whatever, instead of trying to do fine enough pad pitch for modern tiny SMT parts.
