The issue with this is you need flat PCBs due to the depth of field of a flatbed scanner. Even in that article they had to remove components from it. That's quite annoying since most of the boards I have have stacked USB connectors.

Yep, that's the big drawback. It looks rather nice, however.

I'd be scared of scratching the glass of the scanner.

I'd imagine you should be able to place a thin sheet of perspex - or something similar - to protect the glass

PCBs rarely contain diamonds. For decent scanners with real glass this is not a major problem.

Pockers rarely contain diamonds. Phone screens are real glass. Yet phone screens get scratched over time.

A lot of it is probably quartz in dirt.

Cling film on the bottom?

> Another option is to lay the PCB on a flatbed scanner.

That's detailed in the article.

No it's not.

Ugh, you're right, I read the wrong link. Sorry.