Homebrew PCBs

At 04:21 PM 2/28/2006, you wrote:
>Carl,
>         Thanks for the interest - it's a very small USB PIC based
>development board - sort of like a Basic Stamp in that it sits down in a
>breadboard. Example code supplied so that it shows up as a virtual
>serial port on your PC, Mac or Linux.
>
>         If you want a little bit more information, check out the pages
>I've put up at http://www.greta.dhs.org/UBW - it's not much, but it's a
>start.
>
>         I would love nothing more than for Olimex or SparkFun to
>actually build and stock these boards. But I have no idea how many they
>would really sell.
>
>*Brian


  Cute,
  Too bad I switched to AVRs years ago.
  It's a real small board, I'd think they could do a bunch on a single 
sheet, and just knock them out.

   But in all honesty It might not be worth their trouble, if only on 
support. SFE in particular has been getting hammered on support for low 
markup items (main reason for the price raise on their proto PCB 
manufacturing service).

  Perhaps more of an educational aid.
  Maybe Peter Anderson would be interested.
http://www.phanderson.com/

Single sided boards I make in house with TT, but these double sided boards 
w/smt and lots of PTHs you really want to send out to a production house 
(or if you have to make more then ten of them). Hey, that's why we are in 
this forum, making boards 'in house'.

  It would be really nice to have a distributor for all these small run 
hobby boards, I just don't see anyone really making much of a profit off of 
it (or even breaking even).  You need larger runs to keep the cost down, 
and then you wind up sitting on obsolete inventory. I know I'm sitting on 
hundreds of boards I'll never be able to use.

  Far circuits,  SFE,  olimex seem to be doing the best. And two of these 
make the PCBs themselves 'in house'.

You really have to do it from a love of the art and to support the community.
  But now I'm starting to ramble,



carl

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Henry Carl Ott   N2RVQ
http://users.rcn.com/carlott/
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