Sitting at my door when I got home … Round 2!
I love when the Internet sends presents.
So I sent in five boards to be made. Three of them were 10x, and two of them were 5x. This is what came back:
14x on controller module
12x on power module
12x on filler
5x on wide strip
7x on thin strip
This is what happens when they need to fill a full sheet for processing.
Ha! Who’s you use?
iTead. Files were sent 9 days ago. DHL notified me yesterday the package was leaving HK at 6:45pm … was at my door at 1pm today.
What is the pricing like? I have some project ideas but don’t want to break the bank getting a batch of boards made.
Shipping is $3.90 for a freight tanker to cross the ocean with your boards, or $26+ for DHL to deliver it one (or two) business day(s) after they leave the fab-house. As I said earlier, I submitted files on the 6th at 3:50pm CST. boards were delivered 1pm today.
I’m surprised places don’t take eagle files directly. How much of a pain is it to go from eagle to what they want?
Not at all. But it’s the customer’s job to create the Eagle CAM files. The reason is, the CAM files determines what goes on the boards. For example, I rarely, if ever, leave the tName/bName and tValues/bValues layers turned on. They clutter the board. I prefer adding my own labels, and turn that layer on. If the fab house were to process Eagle files, how would they know what specific layer the clients wants? They don’t know that. That’s why they all provide both their DRC as well as CAM files, so the customer can create their spec files and the fab house just has to manufacture the thing.
Also, I can’t expect the fab house to have paid for a copy of Eagle to process the file that I’m sending them (mine is a paid version, which allows me multiple pages in the same file - the free version can not process that.) This is why all fab houses ask for the standard gerber format files, which Eagle exports to.
I’m in for one or two Ashley if your selling ?
I’m willing to sell what’s left after I build what I need for my test cycle, as long as I have the necessary supplies. I do have a certain amount of stock that I’ve ordered for the strips but once that stock is gone, that’s it. You will either have to wait till the next round of testing (or production), or you can get the PCB and you order the components yourself; basically it’s the LEDs (24 per strip), drivers (12 per strip), and four 0402 resistors (per strip). Though honestly, unless you’re ordering a large quantity like I do, it’s not worth the cost.
For the controller/power modules themselves, I don’t buy a large stock of parts for those because together they run about $48 at cost (FYI, each test cycle is costing me roughly $250-$300 right now.) But if after my test cycle I deem them to be “okay” or with minor need for hacking, I might be persuaded into building a few more for others.
With that said, let me get to building/testing this weekend hopefully and after that’s done I will figure out how many more I can assemble with what stock is left. I have a Solar Sprint race tomorrow (middle school kids) so probably on Sunday/Monday I will start working on this.