USB Patterned Fabric A/MicroB and PCB Manufacture

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phi2OK
 
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USB Patterned Fabric A/MicroB and PCB Manufacture

Post by phi2OK »

Greetings again!

I love the USB Patterned Fabric cable! I was able to get my hands on two of them before they went out of stock.

I am developing a small device that will be produced in relatively small quantities at a time, say 10-20. I am very interested in using this fabric covered cable for two applications for this device.

1. MiniB to USB
2. MicroB without a connector on the other end

Will you carry the Patterned Fabric wire by the spool? Or can you refer me to where I could purchase it, or have the cables produced?

Also……
I have been very impressed with Adafruit and what you contribute to the self empowerment of others. The device I am developing runs along the same line, self empowerment. I call those PEEPS (People Educating & Evolving the Power of SELF). So I wanted to ask if Adafruit has PCB services for small batches? The PCB I am developing is micro circuitry and is roughly 2.25 by 3.5 inches. I am not looking to sell them on your site, I wanted to know if you would print up the boards. After looking through your website I didn't see any reference to this type of service, but it never hurts to ask.

Thanks for all that you provide to others,
Tanya Nodich
For the LOVE of EARTH! LLC

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Franklin97355
 
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Re: USB Patterned Fabric A/MicroB and PCB Manufacture

Post by Franklin97355 »

Adafruit does not build custom boards but there are many companies that do Advanced Circuits is one place and there are others like OSH park and express PCB. Adafruit has this page on manufacturers. If your not in a hurry there are several places that will take your small boards and add them to a panel order and when it is full send it off to be made. This takes more time but if you are willing to wait it is cheaper.

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phi2OK
 
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Re: USB Patterned Fabric A/MicroB and PCB Manufacture

Post by phi2OK »

Thank you Franklin for the info on the custom board manufacturing, I will take a look at the links you added.

Please let me know if you have any information about the Patterned Fabric cable/wire.

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blownupp
 
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Re: USB Patterned Fabric A/MicroB and PCB Manufacture

Post by blownupp »

franklin97355 wrote:Adafruit does not build custom boards but there are many companies that do Advanced Circuits is one place and there are others like OSH park and express PCB. Adafruit has this page on manufacturers. If your not in a hurry there are several places that will take your small boards and add them to a panel order and when it is full send it off to be made. This takes more time but if you are willing to wait it is cheaper.
I appologize for bumping such an old topic, but I didn't want to make a new post as long as it's not necesarry.

With that being said, is there any reason Adafruit doesn't do PCB fabrication for small/one off orders? Are there any plans to add such a service? I realize other places already do this, but I guess it would be kind of nice if were offered here as well as I would rather support Adafruit when I can.

Thanks for any answer!
Chris

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Franklin97355
 
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Re: USB Patterned Fabric A/MicroB and PCB Manufacture

Post by Franklin97355 »

With that being said, is there any reason Adafruit doesn't do PCB fabrication for small/one off orders? Are there any plans to add such a service? I realize other places already do this, but I guess it would be kind of nice if were offered here as well as I would rather support Adafruit when I can.
Adafruit is working full time on the projects for their store and to support Arduino in America. They don't have the workforce or equipment to do PCB manufacture in house, in fact they have their PCBs made by another company for their own products.

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blownupp
 
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Re: USB Patterned Fabric A/MicroB and PCB Manufacture

Post by blownupp »

franklin97355 wrote:...They don't have the workforce or equipment to do PCB manufacture in house, in fact they have their PCBs made by another company for their own products.
Ah ok, I thought for some reason that Adafruit did their own PCB's, probably because I knew that they did the pick-and-place in house along with reflow. Definitely explains why it's not practical!

I guess I had this [incredibly inaccurate] vision of an essentially automated process of designs being sent in and machines just printing them out just as a fax machine would, only with custome PCB's, not paper :p

Thanks for a quick answer! Maybe if you've all been good boys and girls this year Santa will bring a couple PCB etching machjnes for Christmas 8)

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: USB Patterned Fabric A/MicroB and PCB Manufacture

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Masking and etching the traces is only the easiest part of making a PCB. The whole process is equipment and chemistry intensive.

The boards laid out on a full sheet of copper clad will probably have several hundred holes, so you need a high-speed drill with multiple spindles if you want to do more than about one sheet per day. Plating the through-holes is a chemically complex process, and gets even worse for boards with buried layers. Stack-up and bonding require large high-temperature presses. Inspection and electrical testing also require automated equipment if you want to get those done at a reasonable pace. Soldermask and silkscreen printing have to be aligned and printed to match the traces. Routing and grooving the boards requires a CNC mill.

The standard board material, FR4, is an epoxy matrix with embedded sheets of fiberglass cloth. Fiberglass is abrasive, so you have to use carbide drills and cutters, and you have to replace them fairly often.

Most board houses charge $100 to $150 for setup and tooling, regardless of how many boards are made. Short-run prototyping costs $25 to $35 per board with a minimum order of three to four boards. Many board houses offer a deal where they'll discount a full run by the price of the prototyping run because you've already paid the setup and tooling costs.

Places like Seeed, who offer short-run boards at a few dollars per square inch, do so by aggregating many small orders into a single panel and having it done at the $25 to $35 rate. The catch is that they only do runs every 2-4 weeks so they have time to aggregate enough board designs to break even on the process.

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blownupp
 
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Re: USB Patterned Fabric A/MicroB and PCB Manufacture

Post by blownupp »

Haha, certainly a bit more complex than I thought. I guess I really took it for granted how much work goes into those boards, seeing tutorials for etching your own left me jaded into thinking it was somehow that easy on an industrial level.

Thanks for the detailed reply, Mike. You definitely help put things in perspective for me as well as seeing the merit to the innovations people are making in regards to 3d printers with CNC and different filaments that they're working towards having print out boards.

I'm very new to all of this right now; i'm just about ready to design a small board in Eagle and have a few made, since it's for something that I keep needing to make for different projects. Once it's practical, I'd like to have a go at etching my own!

Thanks again!

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: USB Patterned Fabric A/MicroB and PCB Manufacture

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Etching single-sided boards isn't that hard. You can buy copper clad that has photosensitive film already laid onto the copper, so you can just mask it, expose it, rinse the softened resist away, and etch.

There's also the toner-transfer method, using laser printer toner (a thermoplastic) as a mask that adheres to the surface of the copper. It takes some practice to get a good transfer, but can produce good results once you get used to it.

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