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#PCBWay

1 post1 participant0 posts today

This evening's frustration...

Parts I want to use on my #PCBWay build are not available on lcsc. They're available on digikey, tme etc, but because they're not in China they're eyewateringly expensive.

AliExpress will ship the parts to the UK for 10% the cost, but AliExpress won't ship to China, even though they're... _in China_. Taobao (the Chinese equivalent) won't let me browse unless I create an account but won't let me create an account because my mobile number is in the wrong format...

Wait. What the fuck is happening with #pcbway ?

The difference in price for the same board with JLCPCB is a bit too high to make me think this is not a problem on their end.

Replied in thread

About time to pick this #NES project back up!
I swapped out the defective spring-load cart mechanism with a Slotmaster (github.com/ShawMerlin/NES-Slot) that seems to be working great!

BTW I had this printed by #PCBWay, and it came out perfect. Also want to thank everyone that printed my PCBs there, as I was able to pay for this print with those credits!

Next step is deciding which replacement power module to use from github.com/ShawMerlin/NES-Powe

Fundamentally the decision is: do I want to use a PPUDigitizer/RGBtoHDMI or an internal FPGA based RGB solution that brings out analog signals?

I've been sitting here for two fucking hours trying to get #JLCPCB or #PCBWay to properly interpret a BOM.

#JLCPCB fucks it up because they have internal part numbers. Okay, I can understand that.

#PCBWay because it has a broken captcha *after* I set everything up and manually clarified the minor BOM issues from their #KiCAD plugin.

And the broken fucking captcha deletes *everything* when I give up and hit "back".

Fuck web browsers. Fuck captchas. Fuck websites that don't save your progress.

OK! The VT100 keyboard switch and LED boards are working their way through the machines of PCBWay.com who were kind enough to cover the costs. While those are in flight I'll complete the keyboard case design and nail down the key and cap production method which consists of resin printing 83 shafts per board, molding and baking polymer clay caps around the shafts, and then coating and curing a protective layer of UV resin.
#vt100 #keyboards #miniatures #kicad #sponsored #PCBWay

Continued thread

Completed a full design cycle with #KiCad today. Generated the "final" gerbers and drill files about six times, as one does as you keep coming up with little changes (forgot mounting holes!) But the CAM side was very smooth and easy. All around happy with the tool and result.

Zipped up files and trying #PCBWay as vendor this time. I see it's about 3x the cost of my last order with them (in 2020). Both manufacturing cost and shipping are steeper now. :(