hey im totally crashing this party! unfortunately im booked for a while and cant write any code or do much layout because of other commitments for a few months....
that said, i have a p&p so i may be able to fab boards once the design is in a 'release' state. (its best if the board only has parts on the top and they're 0603 or larger - the machine can handle 0201 but the feeders are different because of part spacing which makes it $. its not good for 'one off' fabbing because the setup time takes many hours)
i design open source hardware for a living and ive worked with a bunch of OSH designers (ybox, drawdio, tv-b-gone, etc) and we've always worked out a plan where everyone is happy. so let me know if this sounds like something you'd like me to be involved in :)
EDIT: crap, i should have made a new thread. can someone moderate-move this post?
Ladyada,
Wow, thank you for the offer of help with assembling boards. I have wished many many times that I had a pick and place machine... I think the only thing holding us back is that Ian and I had discussed using Seeed Studio to manufacture the boards. So I think the plan was to use them for assembly for the initial boards. Having said that I would love to figure out some way to include you in this project. Maybe we can have a discussion about partnering with you as a distributor once the design is complete? Is that even something you would be interested in?
At the very least I would like to have a discussion with you about your experiences with the pick and place machine. I've been wanting to buy one for a while now, it would be great to get some advice.
Jack.
[quote author="jack.gassett"]
Ladyada,
Wow, thank you for the offer of help with assembling boards. I have wished many many times that I had a pick and place machine... I think the only thing holding us back is that Ian and I had discussed using Seeed Studio to manufacture the boards. So I think the plan was to use them for assembly for the initial boards. Having said that I would love to figure out some way to include you in this project. Maybe we can have a discussion about partnering with you as a distributor once the design is complete? Is that even something you would be interested in?
At the very least I would like to have a discussion with you about your experiences with the pick and place machine. I've been wanting to buy one for a while now, it would be great to get some advice.
[/quote]
sure, adafruit could distribute or manufacture. there are some benefits to having domestic manufacture (theres also benefits for having offshore, its all tradeoffs :) ) - in a previous dream i started to sketch out a full set of completely open-source-hardware tools, im still doodling designs but am making progress on some. im more interested in '1 purpose' tools like a LA or scope which is why this caught my eye! of course in 2010 id also be interested in poking at the hardware/software for SUMPPUMP as well! particularly since i have little experience in such things :D
for p&p info, we have a pick and place wiki & forum check wiki.ladyada.net and forums.adafruit.com, we have a small but excited community. please visit, many non-machine-owners ask questions all the time.