Marooned

[jpanhalt]

So far, we have had a bitterly cold Winter with lots of snow. Flat areas had more than a foot accumulated plus a fresh 6 to 8" over the weekend. Wednesday, it got to 40°F, and the warm spell has continued. I am on the Black River, but well above it. My driveway is another story. It is flooded. All in all, I can think of worse places to be marooned:


Which leads me to the subject of homemade PCB's. For more than 15 years now, I have used photoresist-coated banks from Injectorall (DigiKey) and did my own etching. My current project is a little more complicated than usual. It is double-sided and requires more than 80 drilled holes. So, I checked into the cost for a commercially made board and decided on OSH Park (oshpark.com). So far, I am impressed with the ease of ordering. It does the Gerbers for you from several formats, including Eagle brd files and lets you preview them. The latter was important for finding some small errors. On the third trial, I was pretty happy with what I saw. Now for cost: $53 for three copies of a 3.77" x 2.82" board, including shipping ($17.66 each). At DigiKey, a blank 3.5" X4" pre-sensitized board was $10.32 plus shipping.

I will need to wait a couple of weeks and will update on quality after they arrive.

Any others here have experience with OSH Park and similar low-cost providers?

John

 

[davenn]

Yeah, I guess that there's a lot of Nth Americans that think global warming is a load of rubbish. And seeing the cold winters you guys have had for the last "x" years they could be forgiven for thinking that way.

I havent done any personal OPCB etching for years. I outsource all my commercial stuff to a company locally that does a nice job of etching tinning pads, lacquering and screen printing. I just supply them with the layout files from Protel
I have been considering seeing if there is anywhere in China that could do them cheaper


cheers
Dave