So I’ve had a few conversations with people lately who are looking to make their own PCBs and get them ordered and it’s been suggested that we should all pool together for a group order to save on DHL costs.
So, putting this out here - who would be interested in a monthly PCB run via JLCpcb? @andrew1973 and myself have been using them quite a bit lately and their online EDA software is pretty good for beginners.
The first set of 10 50x50mm boards in each order would be $2.57 AUD with every one after that being $6.57 AUD so we’d probably just take the total cost of production and divide by however many sets of 10 boards or panels to even out the cost.
Shipping comes out to $25USD generally for DHL and since it’s DHL we’d be able to have a ‘Put in your order by Thursday to get it Tuesday’ type deal.
I’ve got a bunch of boards I’m spinning up for a bulk order soon, so who would be interested in this?
$260 ex GST for a 2-layer 180×260mm panel. This works out a lot cheaper than others like OSHPark. No idea how it compares with JLPCB… Google keeps wanting to show me JLCPCB.
But, the catch is we’ll probably have to do the panellising ourselves for this to be cost effective. The upside is we’re buying local, so shipping will be a lot less.
JLCPCB would do the same for US$26.16, and give us 5 panels of the same. Okay, JLCPCB it is. Okay, scratch my earlier comment.
I have used Seeedstudio PCB manufacturing for most of my PCB projects when the PCB size is less than or equal to 10cm x 10cm because for that PCB size the product and shipping fee would be very affordable.
I’d be happy to run you through how I make use of EasyEDA some time and I know @merseyless can run you through Altium and a few other members can run you through KiCAD and Eagle.
I’ll start a discussion thread in #cause-effect:electronics about board design and maybe schedule some times to chat about it.
Also general reminder for anyone else subscribed to this thread, I’ll be placing this order on Tuesday night at 8PM so please have your gerbers ready and to me by then.
Max size for this group buy is 100x100mm, you could definitely put in for a larger order buy you would need to pay a larger percentage of the shipping costs since the boards would be bigger than their standard shipping options.
If you can make a repeatable design that fits in 100x100mm that could work.
I think 180x180 does not affect shipping price. At least I have ordered boards than are 180x70 and they are sent in a box that is slightly larger than 180x180 for the same price shipping as 100x100.
Someone asked me to post some photos of my circuit boards so people can see what sort of things are getting made with these group orders. So here’s my recent boards!
This first is a sort of high-current shift register expansion board for an ESP8266 to control many outputs at once. It was designed to theoretically be easy to assemble by beginners, so it’s all through-hole components. It measures 15cm by 8cm, and including my share of shipping was $27.92 for 5 boards, or $5.58 per board.
This second one is an attempt to make my own 7-segment displays with a custom segment design using 0603 SMD LEDs. Some laser-cut acrylic filled with diffusing resin will sit on top of the board. I paid extra to have the board produced in white to help spread out the light. It measures 5.8cm by 6.9cm, and including my share of shipping was $26.16 for 10 boards, or $2.62 per board.
Part of the point of these boards has been to design & make them using the least technical skills possible. Both of these designs were made entirely within EasyEDA, all with just a web browser. 95% of the routing on both boards was done by just hinting the autorouter, with some small clean-ups afterwards to fix a couple routes & to better link the ground planes. I don’t remember how long the first design took me, but for the second design it was less than a week between first creating the new blank project in EasyEDA to placing the order.
