[Arm-netbook] Crowsupply update

[Hrvoje Lasic]

On 8 January 2018 at 11:06, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net>
wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 9:32 AM, Hrvoje Lasic <lasich at gmail.com> wrote:
> > agree on your points.
> >
> > did you ever think about in investing in small PNP machine (or just small
> > oven plus some hand tools), like being able to produce small batch in
> house
> > and test it qucikly?
>
>  yehyeh, i did - at one point.  although mike only charges abouuut...
> USD $300-400 for assembly.    plus... i need to have a stable base
> otherwise i am disassembling equipment and shipping it overseas.
>
>  last year i borrowed someone's equipment, i managed to do two of the
> RK3288 boards.  RAM ICs $12 each (QTY 4 so that's... $48 in RAM
> ICs...), 650-pin 0.5mm pitch BGA processor $12.... you get that wrong
> it's f*****g expensive.
>
>  by contrast whomever mike uses, apart from not filling in the huge
> 3mm hole under the AXP209 (i've now changed that to a hatch-pattern of
> about 15 small vias), i haven't actually had a board failure except
> where the USB-OTG and Micro-HDMI connectors had to be hand-soldered.
>
> > do you have any idea how reliable www.openpnp.org project is currently,
> for
> > example to meet your specs on board with soem available hardware?
>
> i did investigate openpnp - the critical thing if you are going to
> make one of those is, the rod across to the other side to keep the 2
> belts in sync is **NOT** optional.  the distance (span) is too great
> (600mm) for a single belt to reliablly keep the head position (H
> style) steady by driving only ONE side of the horizontal part of the
> "H".  you MUST put the rod across so that the motor drives BOTH sides
> of the horizontal cross bar EQUALLY.
>
>  here's the thing: if i was intending to manufacture boards "from
> home", no problem.  set up a nice business, stay in one plaaaace,
> become a home-grown electronics factory, maybe in 10 years have a nice
> retirement fund.   it's a nice thought, isn't it? :)  but i'm not
> going there... that's not my life's purpose.
>
> l.
>

Agree, but I am more thinking in getting through lets say between 10 and
couple of hundred board production. If you have 1000 pcs and stable pcb
most likely you will order that in China.

But that point that really kicks from zero to 1000 is critical as well as
fast prototyping.

But from perspective of your current project maybe not an issue as you need
to produce it in qty, also later hopefully 1000 pcs may be not issue.

But if you are small, starting business producing 100 pcs in house looks
like good option.