ouch! where did you order from??

according to some research I did a couple weeks ago, it's not terribly expensive to send regular letter-type parcels between the US and australia... over here, you can buy a pack of 20 sheets for $28 USD ($36 AUD) plus shipping...

have you tried buying from the manufacturer? they say they are an international distributor... even if they charge some outrageous shipping price, it might still be cheaper to have someone over here order a pack and then mail it to you...

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EEgeek.net

 

Where did you buy it?

Len

 

hehe, my PCB from sparkfun just came through:



US$32 inc. postage to UK, 19 days.

Next time the cost of the board will be half and total will be $19.50.

Which is not bad! $5.00 sq. inch for first order and $2.50 sq. inch if first order passed their DRC OK.

 

Will a hp7700 printer work. When I look up the spec it says laser quailty but does not tell what it is?

 

it should be extremely obvious whether it's a laser or inkjet printer... if nothing else, if it has ink cartridges, it's an inkjet, and if it has a huge toner cartridge, then it's a laser... and laser printers generally have much more complex mechanisms and weigh a whole lot more...

is this the printer you're talking about?
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en...40-305374.html

if so, then it is definitely not a laser, and thus won't work... chances are, any printer that can print photos, and doesn't weigh a ton, probably isn't a laser.

and pittuck, that looks very nice... however that's a pretty bad deal for prototyping! I assume if you make any changes to the board, you'll have to pay the $5/sq. in. again until you get everything straightened out? I thought the real advantage of the sparkfun PCB deal was that it was cheap enough for prototyping, however by charging couble for the first run of the board, they are sort of discouraging one-off prototyping...

I can't do plated thru-holes, or solder mask... (can do a form of silkscreen, but have never bothered) but I can easily make a board in under an hour.

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EEgeek.net

 

well the problem is if they did not do the $5 option then they would have to stop the service.

I am pretty into the PCB serivce, i make the DRC. Anyhow the basic reason is there are loads of people with buggy boards, dril file problems, gerber output problems etc. etc. It was not the problems which casued the erm problem, but the time taken to explain how to fix the problems

Either way its still a good deal, best way to 'beat the system' and still get the required feedback is to get a $5 sq. inch and use the airmail option, may be weeks till u get it but u can easily get the next board out as soon as the first one passes DRC. Will be $13 or so overhead on ur order. Not too bad...

 

they should supply some DRC files... for eagle at least, all you have to do is load that file and run the DRC. it would let people fix their problems on their own before submitting things, so theoretically fewer people would attempt to submit failing boards, which should allow them to reduce their "first board" price.

if they did that, they could also do things on a customer-by-customer basis... ie - if you had already made a board with them that passed DRC, they could "trust" you a little more, and only charge you the $2.50/sq. in. for future boards, unless you submitted a failing one, then they could kick that particular one back up to $5 as before.

oh well, maybe someone should suggest that to them... i'm too lazy

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EEgeek.net

 

Well the DRC settings are the same as the defult eagle files. Eagle is very much the most supported CAD software for the Sparkfun service. With the tutorial and the files they provide it takes 2 or 3 mins to output the files. Only thing now is that Eagle has now chosen to use 2.4 formatting, which is not a large problem, and either takes 2 mins to fix for good or 20 secs to write a line saying the drill file is 2.4.

The problems come from other programs, missing drill tool info is a big problem and other software which the users use are not as easy to configure (ala vutrax).

When i get the online submission service working most things should clear up and the price might come down, perhaps not totally, but *possibly* a dollar or two. Nathan has said repeatedly that they get little money from the service as it is!

Anyhow, the extra charges were considered, originally it was a $5 charge to bug fix a broken board, but it would be less popular. ATM the system works and there is enough orders to make the pannels, if more customers are needed the prices will go down

hehe, its too late, i type too much when its late, let me sleep :cry: lol