PCB fab, custom work and one-offs

[livingnote]

Regarding the general prices of PCB work, I have a suggestion to make.

In my daily work, I make boards for commercial products
and might be able to offer a right good DIY deal for all your
"hey I foud this but can't etch it"-projects for a fair price.

What I can offer is this: Custom etched
PCBs at 12 ct/cm2 plus shipping, double-sided for
18ct/cm2 and if you need 10 discount 20%. I can
swoop this low because I do not drill and do not apply
solder mask.

Originally, I would have liked to hold prices below 10ct
per square centimeter, but since it's me doing the etching
and running to the post office etc., my time is limited.

But bottom line is that I love to etch, and if there is enough
resonance in this thread I will move it to the black market.

Of course you can always gang up on me to get those
20% 

Happy DIYing,

Lukas

 

[clintrubber]

Hi Lukas,

Looks good  What kind of layout-formats can you accept ?

Bye,

  Peter

 

[livingnote]

Hey Peter,

Ideally, bmp, since everything goes bmp
before printing anyway. But pdf works too.
Maybe hi-q JPG or any of the other photoshop
formats would work, but 1-bit BMP is the
straight way into the "brain", ideally at 600-1200dpi.

What I don't have yet is Gerber. I have had some
major difficulties getting Gerber to open properly
on my mac, and thus I can't guarantee that it
will actually come out as designed. But if
anyone knows how I can get this to work
reliably on mac, I would of course be happy.

Cheers,

Lukas

 

[tv]

This looks good. Esp. for europe.

I have a proposal - would you be willing to offer pre-TINNED etched pcb's? F.e. with the SENO 3211 (iirc you can get it @conrad). (pre-tinned singlesided pcb's 50um copper for all the popular project here would be cool 8) )

What's your materials? FR2, FR4? Are you having f.e. thin (1mm) and thick (2mm) boards? 50um copper?

 

[livingnote]

I work with FR4, 35µ 1.5mm, blue board. I have the
pic of one here in the lab psu thread.

I will be soon switching to FR5 as an option for reflow
soldering, though.

Depending on the demand, I can source materials,
what I can guarantee is that I can get 70µ copper. Would
just need to calculate what what costs, but essentially
I can get just about anything together. Heck, just recently
did a 1/2mm thick board.

Ah and yes, Seno tin is a go. Have it right here, but I
would have to see the cost it adds, that stuff is pricey.

Edit: Ah and yes I do Eagle, so if you design something
and have a .brd you don't have to hit "export".

Just one thing: If you have little finger-sized boardies
or SOP-to-DIL adapters and whatnot, don't expect me to
saw it all if you decide to fit a zillion on a Eurocard

I work from large sheets btw, so there is no constraint
w.r.t standard sizes. Can go almost to A3.

 

[dagoose]

ok! this is great news!

btw... if you are doing a fully working crush 'n blend board make at least one extra for me  8)

 

[livingnote]

Sure, just sent you some boards from a mediocre run free of charge.

I have six more of those to give away. Anybody?

 

[signalflow]

PM'ed

Casey

 

[clintrubber]

Also PM'ed,

thanks,

  Peter

 

[tv]

+1

 

[livingnote]

Okay, thanks a lot, that's it for the freebies

Send me your addresses n'stuff to diy /that squiggly thing/ livingnote.com, and I'll get dem boards out to you.

Edit: And for all orders, now vector PDF is best. I just implemented PostScript.

 

[livingnote]

Hey Lance, can you send me an email? Your inbox is full.

And MikeyB, same here.

 

[mikeyB]

Hello Lukas - sent email via your website

Mike

 

[livingnote]

You know what?

Since I just got started with this, and this little sheep's still on a bit shaky
legs- I feel like it's...

test run time ))

The suspects are these:

I have my little summing stick hanging around, as well as the internal
crush 'n' blend.

I'm gonna etch 100 summing sticks and 50 internal crushers and blenders.

You can order either 1 cnb or 2 mix sticks, giving you either an unbalanced
crossfader or a possibility for stereo balanced simple summing. All you pay
is postage, which in the EU is 2 Euros and international I'll check.

It'll be a real acid test (lol) for what I do, and you can get to know how I
work. Apart from that, this forum has been the single most important source
of knowledge and support and cool stuff for me getting into the world of pro
audio DIY, and I have always wondered how I can say thank you and return
the favor. And of course it'll help spread the word.

Offer good while supplies last

And please, NO PMs, send me a mail to diy@(my handle on this forum).com.
Include address and which board you want.

And have a great day. 

 

[tv]

Hey, L.!

How about something slightly more elaborate? Namely I had a 8stereo input->2bus balanced summing device (for use with a computer, "groups" - busses summing) in mind for some time now. It would use cheap off-shelf components, and have a hybryd opamp for "flavor" (simple a-class stage, tested, works great, a spin-off of PRR's tori-amp). Since you are into summing... just a thought. If you are interested this is where it's at: I have a schematic on paper, would need some time to draw it in computer. You design the pcb?

 

[livingnote]

You're on. Let's do it  ;D

thanks for the track btw

L

 

[tv]

Hi

This is a "concept" schematic of the summing circuit. The philosophy is "less is more", and the summer is all-the-way balanced. In attached schem (login to view) - there's also NY Dave's original schematic of a simple balanced summer (shows one channel). The hybrid opamp works nicely and will work with most BJT's (BD135, 137, BC547 instead of BC182 etc., even works with all-positions BC182...). For the most simplistic version, the project would take 2x 5532, 8x BD139 and 4x BC182.

However, for a complete project there's a lot to-do still:

- determine best resistor values for Rin and Rgain.
- ??? how to implement a balanced 6dB pad for the opamps (could be omitted)
- design a +/-18V power-supply that would fit on the board. (well-filtered 7818/7918)
- decide if using a DC-out-coupling with a servo or use capacitor-coupling (needs more tinkering)
- if output be DC-coupled, a short-circuit protection (one LED and a resistor) should be incorporated into the amp design.


But, the amp sounds good to me as-is already. You can build one for yourself and play with it some, maybe you'll like it. I'll try to put the schematics in order quickly but I don't have so much time these days.

Edit:
- there could also be a ferrite bead or a small hex-core between the R-in's and "-" input of the opamp.
- for a servo (will be shamelesly similar to ssl9k's): there's option to use a) the other opamp in a 5532 or b) to use something like TL052/TLE2072. The option "a" would mean 4x 5532 per stereo board (maybe a cleaner, more encapsulated build), option "b" would mean 2x 5532 and 2x TLxxx per board. I'm not so sure about 5532's DC performance... Anybody comment on that?

 

[livingnote]

Ah, why don't we get a thread together for that one?

 

[tv]

OK I'll get the stuff together and start a thread, then delete things posted here.

 

[livingnote]

Great, this is just possibly gonna take some time as workload is like 125% right now...