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How I Made a Cheap PCB

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Re: How I Made a Cheap PCB

#71

Post by diskcat »

schiffern wrote: post #55
diskcat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people in China are willing to work for a lower labour standards I don't see why I shouldn't buy from them. They are already making huge sacrifices working in terrible conditions because they weren't lucky enough to be born in the US or western europe et al. Chinese workers are very smart and hard working, so their position in life is not based on their ability but simply bad luck (relative to people born in the U…

>If people in China are willing What makes you think the workers have any other choice? They're not "willing" if it's wage slavery. What makes you think the people injured by pollution are willing? When exactly did they give their consent in this transaction? (the knee-jerk response to both is "government regulations", but those are so thoroughly captured/corrupted that no real consent is transmitted) >If I bought fr…

>What makes you think the workers have any other choice? They're not "willing" if it's wage slavery.

that's like saying we are all physics slaves because the universe imposes the laws of physics on us...

slavery means a specific thing. when a person is owned as property and has no right and must obey his master on pain of death.

don't stretch the word

>What makes you think the people injured by pollution are willing? When exactly did they give their consent in this transaction?

Im still waiting on the my nuclear reparation money from the USA for all the extra exposure from all those atmospheric nuclear tests

nobody in the world has a legitimate pollution compensation scheme

>This seems equally likely in China.

well since im paying less for stuff from china im definitely paying less for a 1% yacht

Re: How I Made a Cheap PCB

#72

Post by diskcat »

pmoriarty wrote: post #51
diskcat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people in China are willing to work for a lower labour standards I don't see why I shouldn't buy from them. They are already making huge sacrifices working in terrible conditions because they weren't lucky enough to be born in the US or western europe et al. Chinese workers are very smart and hard working, so their position in life is not based on their ability but simply bad luck (relative to people born in the U…

What makes you think the money you spend on Chinese goods isn't mostly going to the rich 1% in China? China has their own billionaires who mostly make their money off the backs of the Chinese poor, just like it happens in the US.

Given the choice of giving $1 to a chinese 1% or $10 to an american 1% I still choose $1.

Re: How I Made a Cheap PCB

#73

Post by diskcat »

madengr wrote: post #28
diskcat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people in China are willing to work for a lower labour standards I don't see why I shouldn't buy from them. They are already making huge sacrifices working in terrible conditions because they weren't lucky enough to be born in the US or western europe et al. Chinese workers are very smart and hard working, so their position in life is not based on their ability but simply bad luck (relative to people born in the U…

That US PCB manufacturer is also sending his kid to school, paying state and federal taxes, SS, healthcare for employees, and probably allot for hazardous waste service. What makes you think the Chinese PCB manufacturer is not in the 1%; just assumption the US manufacturer is.

>That US PCB manufacturer is also sending his kid to school,

that's great. but chinese schools are way cheaper than US schools so if somebody asked me to give up $100 to educate 100 chinese kids or half a US kids for x amount of time I would have to say the chinese on utilitarian principle since I can hardly justify that a US person is worth 100x a chinese person.

>paying state and federal taxes

a lot of which is going to welfare i.e. hands out for people not doing anything productive, which again is a very bad way to spend money.

>SS, healthcare for employees,

same arguments ditto

>and probably allot for hazardous waste service.

This is great. However, china is kinda too poor to have good hazardous waste removal. Thus money spent on china makes it richer and more likely to have hazardous waste, thus more likely that less people will be exposed to hazardous waste.

>What makes you think the Chinese PCB manufacturer is not in the 1%; just assumption the US manufacturer is.

because US is a wealthier country therefore all else being equal the probability of the US manufacturer being rich is higher than the same prob. for the chinese

Nothing personal to the americans of course. It's not their fault either than a bowl of noodles in US is 10x the price of the same thing in china so an american has to make way more money than a chinese to survive but i like to spend the least amount of money possible.

Re: How I Made a Cheap PCB

#74

Post by madengr »

stephen_g wrote: post #68
madengr wrote: post #3

Nice, instead of supporting the PCB business 5 miles away, send it to China. The copper not on your PCB is probably floating down some Chinese river, hence "Dirty PCB".

That's an overly hostile comment - and unrealistic - I'm guessing you're probably not in the electronics industry? In many places there's only one reason a small company (let alone an individual) would buy a short run of PCBs locally - you desperately require it in two to four days and are willing to pay six times the price to get it. It's not that people aren't willing to support local PCB manufacturers, it's just t…

Hostile? Hardly. I am in the industry. I have been doing RF circuit design for 20 years, and order several PCBs per year, although these are expensive PCBs of RF laminates. For inexpensive though, some places will queue up 2/4 layers G10 laminates for 2 week delivery (i.e. eprotos.com). Then again, I have a PCB router at home, and a vacuum UV exposure box, so I don't order many hobby PCBs.

Re: How I Made a Cheap PCB

#75

Post by ZenoArrow »

unwind wrote: post #54
ZenoArrow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Well, it is listed under "Ramblings"" My issue was with the word 'made'. If I see a title for 'I made x' I expect a little more than 'I ordered x'. I'm not going to make an article about 'How I made an iPad' if I just ordered one from Amazon.

Huh? Teaching oneself PCB layout software and actually, you know, doing the layout work is certainly "doing". It doesn't even say, but I assume (from the picture of the unpopulated board) that the OP also soldered the board, which is even more "doing".

True, was probably mostly a case of misunderstanding. I was hoping to see an article about making PCBs as in making them at home. If the term used was 'assembling a cheap PCB' I'd probably not have overreacted.

Re: How I Made a Cheap PCB

#76

Post by kefka »

schiffern wrote: post #55
diskcat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people in China are willing to work for a lower labour standards I don't see why I shouldn't buy from them. They are already making huge sacrifices working in terrible conditions because they weren't lucky enough to be born in the US or western europe et al. Chinese workers are very smart and hard working, so their position in life is not based on their ability but simply bad luck (relative to people born in the U…

>If people in China are willing What makes you think the workers have any other choice? They're not "willing" if it's wage slavery. What makes you think the people injured by pollution are willing? When exactly did they give their consent in this transaction? (the knee-jerk response to both is "government regulations", but those are so thoroughly captured/corrupted that no real consent is transmitted) >If I bought fr…

(I'm not the parent or GP)

My answer is: I can't afford US goods costs. I can afford Chinese costs.

I'm not a company whose decisions are to move away from the US for an extra $1 billion profit. My choices are : Get it from China, or Don't get it.

Re: How I Made a Cheap PCB

#77

Post by jwr »

bobadams5 wrote: post #47
jwr wrote: post #38

Several points: * KiCAD has become a great tool for designing boards, even fairly complex ones. And it's completely free, both in terms of freedom and money. Don't get locked into EAGLE, which is becoming increasingly obsolete (development is glacially slow) and will suddenly become quite expensive to use once you want a certain board size or a number of layers. * There are multiple PCB services in China, itead.cc, s…

Has KiCAD improved their schematic/footprint library management? Last time I tried to use it (2 or 3 years ago) it drove me crazy with how difficult it was to use. I've used Diptrace, KiCad, Altium, and Cadence Allegro and KiCad was by far the worst of these for handling parts.

> Has KiCAD improved their schematic/footprint library management? Last time I tried to use it (2 or 3 years ago) it drove me crazy with how difficult it was to use.

It's pretty bad. Lots of quirks, I still haven't guessed the right incantations for it to notice libs you added, managing library paths is a mess, and you have to do most of that work for every project.

But then again, coming from EAGLE, I'm used to this stuff being incredibly crappy. I don't know — do other tools get this right?

Re: How I Made a Cheap PCB

#78

Post by drone »

kersny wrote: post #48
david-given wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know any places that do assembly as well? My soldering skills are approximately good enough to do 0.1 inch pitch pins about 90% of the time, which isn't really good enough for surface-mount, and most modern microprocessors don't come in anything else.

You could check out Macrofab: https://macrofab.com/ I've never actually used them but their online tooling is impressive, they have reasonable prices for low quantity assembly, and they've manufactured and fulfilled a few kickstarter projects.

Hi there! I am the founder of MacroFab, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Quick summary though: we do US-based (in Houston, TX) assembly, we offer low-cost prototyping options along with production quantities all with real-time quoting down to the component level, build-box assembly, programming, testing, inventorying, and fulfillment. We have APIs to allow direct integration and we have a number of integration partners coming online this year.

Re: How I Made a Cheap PCB

#79

Post by pyb »

joshvm wrote: post #46
pyb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need a cheap PCB prototype more quickly (2 days), the PCB Train service is always a good source.

Worth pointing out that PCB Train is business cheap, not hobbyist cheap. You'll easily pay upwards of £50 for a "short" turn around board from PCB Train (10 days) and you'll have to pay extra for things like ENIG. A 1 square inch board, 2-layer standard finish, 2 day turnaround is north of £300. You don't need to pay much more to get multiple quantities though, so this is largely setup cost. Note that you'll also pay…

Yes but I was talking about their prototypes (no solder resist or silkscreen legend) which are a lot more affordable, and quicker. (seems ca. £37 for 100m2)

Re: How I Made a Cheap PCB

#80

Post by 05 »

VLM wrote: post #40
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PCB business 5 miles away has US labor and associated costs. Compare the Chinese board to Advanced Circuits in the US - http://www.4pcb.com/ - you can't get anything without spending over $100.

4pcb is $33 each min 4 total $132 for 60 sq inches per board times 4 = 240 sq inches or 1548 sq cm for $132 dirtypcbs is $14 for qty 10 of 25 sq cm boards or 250 sq cm total. So 1500 sq cm of boards from dirtypcbs would cost about $14 times 6 or $84. Note that ethically, outsourcing to China is the modern version of handing syphillis blankets to indians. "Well, they're warm blankets, and they did ask for it, and anyt…

> It only costs $50 more not to participate in something as ethically distasteful as Chinese manufacturing

So, you don't own any recent electronic devices either, I presume, like smartphones, computers, home appliances? And who do you think manufactures the components for your not-Chinese-made electronics?

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