DorkbotPDX people doing strange things with electricity

Dropping the per square inch price won't be fair to him for larger boards.

Adding $1 or $2 "setup" charge for all orders would only increase a 2 sq in board from $10 to $12 - still a great bargain. This seems like it would be an appropriate pricing model, as Laen has some more-or-less fixed costs (effort and postage) regardless of the size of the board.

But he seems to want to keep the pricing as is.

I think the best thing we can do is keep creating new projects and fill up his PCB panels with orders.

The problem isn't actually small boards, or even the fixed costs associated with the orders.

The real problem, as siliconfarmer mentioned, is that I'm not selling enough space. After a TON of struggle, I now have a US board house that's happy to do these panels of small designs at a reasonable cost, but to break even, I need to sell upwards of 200 square inches a month. That's only happened once in the history of the order, and I don't think this next order is going to be any different, unfortunately.

Paul's orders have actually been _great_. There's a mix of tiny boards and large boards, and he buys plenty of space each month. Now I just panel his together in a block and send them to him still all tabbed together. I also really appreciate that he handles the distribution of them to people interested in them. That takes a HUGE burden off of me, since the fixed costs _do_ start being a problem when one person orders under half an inch in area.

Over the entire history of the order, only 15 people have come in under the "fixed" costs. The average participant orders about 6 square inches. As far as I'm concerned, those 15 are acceptable losses. I'm willing to lose money on an individual, as long as I don't lose money on the order as a whole, especially since that means I get to keep the pricing scheme simple: A flat $5 / square inch, with shipping.

The goal here is for this to be a useful and inexpensive service to hardware hackers, artists, and casual hobbyists. I want a simple cost structure, and to get people their boards as fast as humanly possible. I think it's a doable goal.

The main thing keeping me from being able to continue providing the service is the lack of interest. Part of it is that I haven't done a great job of advertising it. I think if word got around, it would take off like a rocket. I don't feel comfortable spreading it around on message boards, since this could --in theory-- be for profit, and Google Adwords search terms related to PCBs are expensive.

Unfortunately, these last few orders have been HEAVY losses. Hundreds of dollars losses. If it doesn't turn around in a pretty big way, I'm worried that this next order may be the last one for a while.

First time on here, and so glad to have found an excellent resource like this. I'm technically challenged, so trying to make Eagle work for me was a laugh!! A friend of mine let me in on this deal. Hopefully he can help me set up my board for the next deadline. Just writing to thank you Laen for this great opportunity, and hopefully I'll be able to swing some decent sized orders to help fill up some space. I'm doing small boards, but the quantity hopefully will make up for it. I really do appreciate what you're doing, and hope this can continue for a long time. I've been trying to hand etch boards with an etching tool on a dremel for months now, and they're just too small to get them right!! Hope I can make the deadline!!! Joe

After some google, i found myself here. I'm really interested in this order, but i have some questions:

-> Can it be shipped worldwide (Brazil to be exact)? -> How much for shipment? -> Can i pay via International Credit Card (paypal maybe)?

As stated before, i'm from Brazil and here we lack a good PCB provider. Thanks.

Hi Laen,

Please hang in there if you can, I just found this and will have quite a few boards to do starting in a month or two.

4-layers, with the fine geometries you can do I have no need for them. Certainly in the normal PCB fab world that drives the price up a LOT.

Can the board fab. put soldermask on top of the vias?

Thanks for the PCBs. I appreciate them very much. I posted some pictures of the PCBs in my blog. http://voltsandbytes.com/my-first-blue-pcbs/

Hi all- Sorry to ask this publicly, but is there a status on the PCB order that's going out tomorrow? I've made a submission to the e-mail address a while ago, but haven't heard confirmation, etc. I understand Laen is/was on vacation, anyone know any status on this? Thank you much!

Hi , I am new to this forum and google brought me here. i have submitted my first group pcb order to pcb-order@laen.org . But still haven't received any confirmation . Is this means that my files are not accepted ?

Is the shape of the PCB limited to a simple rectangle? If not, that brings up the following questions.

1. Are edges limited to straight lines, or can they be arcs or other complex curves? 2. Is the size of the board computed as the smallest rectangle that encloses the design?

As with all low-cost PCBs, it almost goes without saying that internal slots and cutouts are disallowed.

What is the largest allowable hole? Usually it's around 250 mils.

Do hole sizes specified in the drill file represent the actual drill tool used, or do they represent the finished (plated) hole size? If the hole is the actual drill size used, how much is the hole diameter reduced by the plating process?

Hi does anyone know anywhere do get BGA reballing and reflowing on the cheap around here? I have a Motherboard that needs the Video chip reballed and reflowed. Axiom (local) will do it for $150 bux. I found places online to do it from $35-100 bucks.. I would like to find someplace local.

Call me if you have any leads.

Thanks! -Gordo

503-333-2131

First, a huge thanks for the service. Our first board design was an isolated gate driver for the EV motor controller we are designing. It's working great, and is far nicer than the hand wired prototype board that we were using before.

We just sent in another few board designs this past weekend, including a first draft of a STM32 board with isolated CAN bus and power supply that will evolve to be the smarts of the motor controller, and probably be the instrument cluster controller and battery management.

My question is about another set of boards. They are designed to fit around the leads of a power MOSFET. Unlike the common situation, they need to fit flush against the case. The leads have shoulders to set the correct stand-off spacing, which prevents this from happening with round holes. For this set of boards we just made the holes a little larger than usual, and will use a Dremel to widen the holes into slots. Is there a way to use overlapping drill holes to make a slot, or will with fab house disallow this because of the risk of drill breakage?

For those interested, these are wiring boards for the power MOSFETs. We solder tinned copper strips to the power device leads, and clamp them directly to the hefty aluminum bus bars with some anti-oxidation grease. The wiring boards provide a better way to hook up the twisted pair wires coming from the gate driver board. And with a circuit board there we can move the gate resistors and TVS protection out next to the MOSFETs, along with having a spot for indicator LEDs so that we know that the gate driver is working.

But for this to work well, the circuit board can't take up much space. With up to 190 amps through the leads, you don't want them as short as possible.

We also are experimenting with a stand-alone "active rectification" circuit. This will replace the diodes we are currently using with MOSFETs that are turned on at exactly the right time to act as high current, low voltage drop diodes. We can do synchronous rectification in software, but we have to be really conservative to avoid shoot-through or leaving the MOSFET turned on when the current reverses during coasting. A circuit that sits right on the MOSFET leads, monitoring the voltage, can do a better job of turning the gate on and off just above the zero crossing.