A method of fabricating chip carriers suitable for use in packaging integrated circuits and other electronic, electro-mechanical and opto-electronic devices is described. In general, a number of wires (or wires and rods) are arranged in parallel in a wiring fixture. After the wires are positioned, they are encapsulated to form an encapsulated wiring block. The wiring block is then sliced to form a number of discrete panels. Preferably, the various wires are geometrically positioned such that each resulting panel has a large number of device areas defined therein. The encapsulant in each panel effectively forms a substrate and the wire segments in each panel form conductive vias that extend through the substrate. The resulting panels/chip carriers can then be used in a wide variety of packaging applications.