Slashdot Mirror

For something of a smartphone class, a one-off PCB may cost several hundred dollars. Then the parts will cost another several hundred dollars in small quantities, as well as being difficult to obtain. Now, you have to solder the parts onto the board, which is a decidedly nontrivial thing - and if you decide you want someone else to do this, it's probably another several hundred dollars.

I recently heard of BatchPCB vendor by reading the tutorials on SparkFun's website.

$10 setup fee plus either $2.50 (2 layer) or $4.00 (4 layer) per square inch of PCB board. So a 4.5" by 2.5" PCB would cost between $38 and $55 for the first board, which is a tad less than several hundred dollars. Granted, I do not know much about PCB classifications, so it may not be smartphone class, but I would think DIY open source hardware would not be designed so to an extremely narrow physical layout which could not be done by hand.

I'm not associated with either SparkFun or BatchPCB, I've recently run across them since I started researching how to get a custom PCB for a toy I am designing for my son.

The initial learning curve is harder, and you'll want a good soldering iron, but once you've cleared those hurdles hand soldering SMD is a piece of cake.

Reflow soldering is completely hobbyist-accessible too: I use a syringe of solder paste to put little dots on all the pads, tweezers to place all the components, and then I lay it in a bare aluminum (NO TEFLON!) frying pan. Throw it on the stove for five minutes and pluck the board out with a pair of needle nose pliers (the pan cools too slowly) after all the solder melts.

The surface tension of the melted solder pulls all the components into alignment, so you don't have to place them perfectly. A few pins usually get messed up since I'm not as precise with the syringe as I would be with a stencil, but I just inspect with a cheap loupe and clean up any mistakes manually. Other people use toaster ovens with much success, but I've found the frying pan works great for single-sided boards.

Honestly I find it's much less tedious than through-hole soldering, and I love having access to all the cool SMD ICs that you just can't get in DIP packages. The only problem is that prototyping is a bitch. If you want to breadboard a SMD IC you have to make a SMD to DIP adapter board first. But I usually don't bother: I just design my board, get one made, manually kludge around any mistakes by lifting pins and soldering in fine wires until I get it working (usually only one or two wires per board), and then get a final one made.

Can I produce a printed circuit board this way? Full meaning traces, plated-through holes, solder mask, silkscreen printing. Doesn't have to be particularly rugged; FR-4 is overkill in terms of strength for most people. If you could keep such a machine busy, how expensive would the results be? Just wondering about the business opportunity; sending designs for simple one-offs to China for fabrication through a consolidation service like BatchPCB has always seemed extravagant in some fashion.

Completely true. There's still tons of things that can be repaired these days: I've replaced the display in my Palm Treo smartphone, and the touchscreen overlay in my Nintendo DS. I've re-soldered headphone jacks (and then coated in glue to prevent it from breaking again). I've taken my PC video card apart and put a new fan and heatsinks on it.

And as for making things from scratch, that too is actually becoming easier. You design with free software and have a PCB manufactured in single quantities for $2.50 a square inch (batchpcb laen pcb). There are services that will produce plastic parts from uploaded 3D models for a fee (shapeways ponoko), or you can put together one of the many rising 3D printer kits and create your own parts out of plastic (makerbot bfb ultimaker).

Yes really. Check out BatchPCB, which is just one among hundreds of companies that do affordable 1-off custom boards: http://batchpcb.com/index.php/Products

http://www.batchpcb.com/ you might have to wait a week or 2 but cheap and just what you are looking for.

Here you go, not a kit but plenty to read and learn. This is where I would start and once you understand it, pick a project and build it from scratch.
http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/

Once you have the understanding, you can create printed circuit boards with Eagle (free for non-commercial use)
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/

and have Sparkfun order your PCBs via BatchPCB
http://www.batchpcb.com/

This is how I got into building my own robots, not the ones from kits but scratch build by ordering the parts and doing my own designs.

Cheap 2-layer: http://www.batchpcb.com/ -- 10-12 days, proto: $10 + $2.50 per square inch.
Cheap multiplayer: http://www.myropcb.com/ -- 21 days, 4-layer: $40 for proto, $0.38 per square inch + $120 setup for large batches.
Myro will also do flex stuff with copper on polyimide, which is useful and unusual.

sparkfun will crank out custom pcb's for $10 setup plus $2.50 per square inch. I design and contract out PCB's for a living and can't find anyone that can beat that price. I use circuit express for my boards, but they cost a *lot* more (although their quality is superb.)