A few months ago we started a private PCB website so our team can get cheap PCBs from a fab in China. Someone spilled the beans, and it hit Hack a Day, Hacker News, etc. We almost shut it down, but it was too much fun to hack and refine the process. Dirty Tuesday is […]
Tag Archives: PCBs
The deal with Dirty Cheap Dirty Boards PCBs
This sad FACE FRAME! documents the moment Ian found out Dirty PCBs hit Hacker News, Hack a Day, etc. Here’s the story behind our joke PCB site… A few months ago there were some comments in the forum about various PCB services making ‘crap’ $0.90 boards. Later we posted a picture of our own $0.20 […]
Box of new PCBs
A box of PCBs just arrived from Seeed Studio’s Fusion PCB service. This batch includes: Bus Pirate LCD Adapter v4b DP6037 PTH.v1 DP6037 protoboard.v1 DP6037 SMT.v1 Logic Boost 6 Channel Logic Analyzer FT230X_LTC4053 Breakout v1a FT230X_LTC4053 breakout v1a with proto-area FT311D (Android) breakout v1b All of these PCBs are available now in the free PCB […]
Bus Pirate v4c PCB community order
Schazamp got restless waiting for the Sick of Beige version of the Bus Pirate v4, namely V4c, to become available at Seeed. He decided to start a PCB order himself. If you’d like to get one from him, head to the forum and leave him a comment. Nevertheless, I want to order a batch of […]
Magnificent Nixie tube thing PCBs arrive
Look great. Socket hole is a little too short and needs to be filed down. Not bad though.
Panelizing multiple PCB on a single cheap PCB service
Schazamp made an instructable on how to get multiple PCB onto a single cheap PCB service, like Seeed’s Fusion, or ITead’s Open PCB. The process involves merging the gerber files with GerbMerge. just wrote up an instructable about how you can easily panelize PCBs for SeeedStudio’s Fusion PCB service. I thought it might be of […]
PCB macro photography without a macro lens
Torwag started a thread in the forum with lots of interesting tips for taking macro pictures of PCBs without buying an expensive macro lens: Many here know how difficult it could be to do good detailed images of your project. A lot of point and shoot cameras are not up to this (macro) task. DSLRs […]
ITead Studio: COLOR Your PCBs
ITead Studio is offering a new “Color your PCBs” service. You can chose to have your boards in red, blue, white, yellow, or black. There’s only a $5 price increase, but instead of 10 boards you get 8. To make up for the smaller board output, they are providing e-testing for all the boards free […]
Converting an Inkjet printer to print PCBs
There are many ways to built a DIY PCB. Some of the more popular ones are the toner transfer method, and the UV exposure of PCBs. Both methods require lots of trial and error. Here is another way to go around building you PCBs. Pourcirup posted a tutorial on how to convert an old ink-jet […]
Zencart MOD: Limit Paypal to specific categories
Adafruit posts some Zencart zennieness every week. Here’s our first humble mod of the popular online store software. Soon one or two popular PCBs will be available for a couple bucks from the PCB drawer. This is just a test, we don’t plan to go into the retail business. We need a way to stop […]
PCB store survey results
Yesterday we asked how much you’d pay for a PCB from the PCB drawer. We played with the numbers and our findings are below. First, answers to some common questions. Nothing will change with our weekly giveaways. We’d like to make boards available to people who want them, but don’t want to try to win […]
Box of new PCBs
A box of PCBs just arrived from Seeed Studio’s Fusion PCB service. This batch includes: XT-IDE Adapter Bus Pirate Demo board v4.0 IR Toy Shield v2.0 BPv3b breakout v3.2 Android Accessory Development kit XT-IDE Adapter, Bus Pirate Demo board v4.0, IR Toy Shield v2.0, BPv3b breakout v3.2 and Android Accessory Development kit are available now in the […]
Get your PCBs made
Digital DIY has a run down of PCB manufacturing options. Adafruit also has a nice one, and we’ve discussed it in the forum. Via Hacked Gadgets.
Week in (p)review: June 24, 2011
Facebook free PCB Friday is on the way. Don’t forget to share your current project in the comments or the forum. Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week: Thermal Tweeter, networked Twitter printer @dangerousproto Bus Pirate v3.5 is now shipping A box of new PCBs just arrived Bus Pirate is back in […]
Open source PCB exchange from ITead Studio
ITead will start giving away mystery PCBs with every order: At normal when you make your prototyping PCB from us, we just send you 10 pcs of your design, now we offer this OPEN PCB activity to get 2 more PCBs at $0.1 cost. If your design and boards is not Privacy/Private, and it can […]
Reflow oven controller update
robots updated his reflow over controller, source code is now available in github. Next up – install the electronics. Via the project log forum.
Reflow oven controller
robots shares his design for a reflow oven controller: I have bought [an] oven. The main reason for this was to bake some PCBs. As with every reflow oven, this one needs temperature control as well. I have baked several pcb without problem with unmodified oven. But that might be luck, as the temperature profile […]
FT232 LCD backpack update
Two alternative FT232 LCD backpack PCBs are in the forum. The first one (pictured above) supports standard H44780 LCDs, and graphic LCDs with some creative wiring. The mini version drops the extra IOs for graphics LCDs to get the smallest possible board. If you’ve got some time this holiday weekend, check out the development thread […]
Bus Pirate v4, IR Toy update, 3EEPROM PCBs
A big box of PCBs arrived from Seeed’s Fusion board service today. Here are a few of the boards that have been mentioned on the blog or in the forum: An updated 3EEPROM explorer board USB Infrared Toy manufacturing update Bus Pirate v4 prototype for developers Most of these boards won’t be available for months, […]
Free PCB Sunday: USB RGB color changer
We go through a lot of prototype PCBs, and end up with lots of extras that we’ll never use. Every Sunday we give away a few professionally-made PCBs from one of our past or future projects, or a related prototype. This is a USB controlled RGB color changing light. Someone made some minor modifications to […]