I've just moved from the UK to the Cupertino, CA in the US (bet you can guess the company ;) ) and building out my maker lab again. 2nd time i've learnt a lot, also actually have some money to spend rather than whatever I can scrounge. The main excuse for new stuff is the old 220v vs 110v which is a bit of a lie, as a step up would be fine for most of the stuff but its a good enough of an exuse

Eagle 7.3 is my poison for layout, grabbed the hobbiest license from Adafruit, as no commercial stuff for a while and gives me the space and features to make life a bit nicer. Did consider other packages (Eagle and I have a love/hate relationship) but all have issues, working on OS X being number 1, cost or privacy issues being number 2. Did seriously think about blowing multiple kilo-dollars on a package but in the end couldn't justify it without a commercial reason, the new lab is costing enough as is.

Got a new 3D printer, a Rigol DS1102D mixed scope and LA. new PSU, nice new Weller iron + proper vice, cutters, static mat etc. Still few relatively little things to get (like a decent bench) for the electronic side of things, maker side some big costly items.

Ideal world could make simple 256 ball bga devices in house with cases etc. but thats a bit unrealistic. PCB would send off but assembly would be nice to do at home. Going to need oven and microscope for that to pan out...

So first board is going to uses a 144 TQFP iCE40HX4K part, will give practise on smd parts and should make a fairly nice little dev board. After that want to try the csBGA HX8K parts :I

First job has been making a part for the library, slow as i'm rusty in Eagle and user friendlynice has never been a strong point (esp on a laptop). Part of me knows that ULP and i'm sure a bunch of tricks can make this less laborious but oh well slow and steady win the race.