Hello Folks,
Now and then I get some questions about how do I do some of these projects, particuarly at any reasonable cost. A big factor in turning out a nice piece of DIY electronics is the PCB board- both the design, and getting quality bare boards fabricated at a reasonable cost.
Gather round, 'cause I'm going to spill a few secrets that can save you a lot of money if this is something you're interested in....
Part of the high cost of PCB fabrication is the artwork and tooling charges- just making a modest size board like my PXO crossover boards can have $750 of plot and tooling charges associated with it, before you even order the fabricated boards!
For Mfr. projects, that's no problem, as you re-use the artwork many times.
For a DIY enthusiast, this is a big stumbling block, as you may change the design, or only plan on building a handful of boards.
Imagine a PCB business that does things a little differently- that collects customer jobs, uses computerized software to correlate and combine jobs on the PCB panels for minimum cost, and who only manufactures in a few set technologies and options for two layer and four layer boards, and recently, single layer. Imagine that your job is combined and produced with others recieved, and though you don't get tooling and plots that you can re-use, you get bare PCB's manufactured in small quantities at prices competitetive to what you'd pay *after* you'd paid the tooling and plotting expenses.
This is PCB-Pool, the vendor I use for board fabrication, out of Ireland and Germany.
Founded in 1989, they've been providing an unusual quality proposition in the PCB market for some years.
Here's a scan of one of the boards I just recieved for my latest project; this is a non loop feedback discrete balanced JFET input balanced differential output for my current DAC and preamp projects.
This shows the top side, which is mostly shield planes; this is a dual layer board. Workmanship is very good, and their feature size capability is very good for the cost - their site details pricing and design rules.
Another side of the equation, though, is design- not eveyone can afford midrange to high end PCB tools, as these days midrange tools are typically in the $5K and up range.
Fortunately, there are many firms offering "student" reduced capability Schematic and PCB design software for free which still has enough capaibility for many projects. Among these are:
Some packages such as Protel and PCAD have full function 30 day trial packages available, but making libraries and completing a project in such a short time may not be realistic...
I use the Protel tools for my schematic and PCB designs.
Quite interesting, if you like the idea of doing business with PCB-Pool, is that they have arranged for a special edition of Target 3001 which only generates files to work with PCB-Pool, but is completely free of cost and time limits.
And no, I'm not getting a rebate for these guys, and I don't work for them- I'm just passing along some of my little secrets for the folks that may have a hankering to build something more often on their own, but are daunted by the cost and obstacles to doing that on a DIY basis.
Best regards,
Jon
Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....
Now and then I get some questions about how do I do some of these projects, particuarly at any reasonable cost. A big factor in turning out a nice piece of DIY electronics is the PCB board- both the design, and getting quality bare boards fabricated at a reasonable cost.
Gather round, 'cause I'm going to spill a few secrets that can save you a lot of money if this is something you're interested in....
Part of the high cost of PCB fabrication is the artwork and tooling charges- just making a modest size board like my PXO crossover boards can have $750 of plot and tooling charges associated with it, before you even order the fabricated boards!
For Mfr. projects, that's no problem, as you re-use the artwork many times.
For a DIY enthusiast, this is a big stumbling block, as you may change the design, or only plan on building a handful of boards.
Imagine a PCB business that does things a little differently- that collects customer jobs, uses computerized software to correlate and combine jobs on the PCB panels for minimum cost, and who only manufactures in a few set technologies and options for two layer and four layer boards, and recently, single layer. Imagine that your job is combined and produced with others recieved, and though you don't get tooling and plots that you can re-use, you get bare PCB's manufactured in small quantities at prices competitetive to what you'd pay *after* you'd paid the tooling and plotting expenses.
This is PCB-Pool, the vendor I use for board fabrication, out of Ireland and Germany.
Founded in 1989, they've been providing an unusual quality proposition in the PCB market for some years.
Here's a scan of one of the boards I just recieved for my latest project; this is a non loop feedback discrete balanced JFET input balanced differential output for my current DAC and preamp projects.
This shows the top side, which is mostly shield planes; this is a dual layer board. Workmanship is very good, and their feature size capability is very good for the cost - their site details pricing and design rules.
Another side of the equation, though, is design- not eveyone can afford midrange to high end PCB tools, as these days midrange tools are typically in the $5K and up range.
Fortunately, there are many firms offering "student" reduced capability Schematic and PCB design software for free which still has enough capaibility for many projects. Among these are:
Some packages such as Protel and PCAD have full function 30 day trial packages available, but making libraries and completing a project in such a short time may not be realistic...
I use the Protel tools for my schematic and PCB designs.
Quite interesting, if you like the idea of doing business with PCB-Pool, is that they have arranged for a special edition of Target 3001 which only generates files to work with PCB-Pool, but is completely free of cost and time limits.
And no, I'm not getting a rebate for these guys, and I don't work for them- I'm just passing along some of my little secrets for the folks that may have a hankering to build something more often on their own, but are daunted by the cost and obstacles to doing that on a DIY basis.
Best regards,
Jon
Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....
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