Hello all,
We are college and hobbyist group based in Chicago. We do monthly batch PCB. In other words, we combine all our circuit boards design into one batch to get a good deal on the our prototype circuit boards. way cheaper and without mouse bytes than oshpark.com.However, lately we are not able to fully fill-up the board batch(around 300 sq. inch). Our group is trying to find if there are any open source barebones PCB that all you guys use more frequently. We can make them part of our batch and provide it as cheap as $3 a square inch two layer. I should note, we do not work with China. All our PCBs are manufactured locally in Chicago and lead free. Any help finding us most popular open source bare bones PCB design will be very helpful for us to keep our project alive….

 

The open source requirement will eliminate a number of candidates and you're going to get a lot of conflicting opinions... You should ask your manufacturer for suggestions...

 

Dennis thank you for your respond... i understand folks uses open source in different manner. but in our recent research we found folks use lots of open source boards for their use. right now, they pay hefty price at sparkfun and other site. we feel we can add these desgin in our batch along with our board to help the maker community.

 

DC-DC converters seem to be in common demand, including ones with constant current output for driving LEDs. I bet it wouldn't be too hard to find a home for them. Modules for PWM control of motors or LEDs is also a hot item.

 

Hello all,
We are college and hobbyist group based in Chicago. We do monthly batch PCB. In other words, we combine all our circuit boards design into one batch to get a good deal on the our prototype circuit boards. way cheaper and without mouse bytes than oshpark.com.However, lately we are not able to fully fill-up the board batch(around 300 sq. inch). Our group is trying to find if there are any open source barebones PCB that all you guys use more frequently. We can make them part of our batch and provide it as cheap as $3 a square inch two layer. I should note, we do not work with China. All our PCBs are manufactured locally in Chicago and lead free. Any help finding us most popular open source bare bones PCB design will be very helpful for us to keep our project alive….

Not open source - but Eagle do Eagle-light which is free for non-profit use, it has limitations as do some of the higher levels, the price seems to have gone exponential by the time you get to a couple of metres^2 board size.

Its now distributed by Farnell/Element-14.

Its one of the most popular layout progs.

 

Ian... thanks for reply.. i was looking for more open source designs that i can plug into my batch of PCB. we are not filling up whole board which is about 300 sq inch. so if i can just plugin the desgin that most of our makers use.. it will be cheaper for makers to just buy the board.

 

Ian... thanks for reply.. i was looking for more open source designs that i can plug into my batch of PCB. we are not filling up whole board which is about 300 sq inch. so if i can just plugin the desgin that most of our makers use.. it will be cheaper for makers to just buy the board.

For open source; put terms like gnu, gpl etc in your search string, and have a look round the Linux forums - a lot of apps have been ported for other platforms.

I think Kicad is at least free - and if you do a ftp search, you'll find a lot more than just the basic distro.

I use Napalm FTP and Filezilla when I want to fill hard drives up.

 

There could be some Pickit2 and Pickit 3 open source boards out there that might be popular?
Max.

 

Arduino
Reprap
to name a few more..

I wonder who your board house is in Chicago.. I used to use quite a few up there professionally before I moved down to NC
Amitron/Alpha/United Electronics and more...

 

DC-DC converters seem to be in common demand, including ones with constant current output for driving LEDs. I bet it wouldn't be too hard to find a home for them. Modules for PWM control of motors or LEDs is also a hot item.

Thank you Wayneh... i wonder where i can find the cad file for the DC-DC and PWM.

 

Arduino
Reprap
to name a few more..

I wonder who your board house is in Chicago.. I used to use quite a few up there professionally before I moved down to NC
Amitron/Alpha/United Electronics and more...

i have used Amitron but they are expensive.. thus far it has been trial and error with each of the Fab shop.. anything you suggestion you can make would be great..another quesiton... i thought Ardunio is copyrighted you only have to buy it from them can't make your own CAD.?

i just want to restate this we are not the business or trying to advertise .. this is just hobby group of 50 plus people trying to save some money on our proto.

 

...i just want to restate this we are not the business or trying to advertise ...

But you will be, as soon as you start generating excess PCBs that need to go somewhere.

Oh, another idea is guitar-to-line or guitar-to-headphone amplifiers. These are common items as well.

 

But you will be, as soon as you start generating excess PCBs that need to go somewhere.

Oh, another idea is guitar-to-line or guitar-to-headphone amplifiers. These are common items as well.

Many years ago I "borrowed" the schematic for the Dod FET amplifier - its brutally simple; just a 3M9 gate leak resistor and a 1k2 gate stopper, I think the drain resistor was about 22k and the source may have been 4k7 with a 10uF bypass.

Its an excellent design for building into the guitar as onboard active electronics - as long as you don't leave it switched on and flatten the battery.

If anyone's interested, i'll have a rummage for the schematic. It has been on this PC, but I do sometimes tidy up old files.

For anything with low input impedance, like powered PC speakers - or even a vest-pocket radio; I usually just use a JFET source follower with the (usually about) 5k volume pot as the source resistor.

The J113 JFET in the Dod isn't an Asian type with the "2SK" missing - that's a power device. Apparently its an NS part and I got some stock from Farnell, but the type isn't really all that critical.

 

I for one would be interested. I have a DOD distortion pedal that probably uses the same circuit. I think the manual has the schematic - I'll take a look.

Here it is:

 

I for one would be interested. I have a DOD distortion pedal that probably uses the same circuit. I think the manual has the schematic - I'll take a look.

 

Free software can often be nasty, full of bugs and hard to use.
I would recommend a paid for but not too expensive package that has lots of features and all the error checking.
One mistake in scrap pcb's could pay for a half decent package.

 

Free software can often be nasty, full of bugs and hard to use.
.

It is not about free s/w, but proven boards for batch processing.

On the question of free s/w however, after using an older Orcad ($$$) package, I transferred over to Kicad and was surprised it virtually replaced Orcad for me and I had some very nice boards made from it.
Max.

 

It is not about free s/w, but proven boards for batch processing.

On the question of free s/w however, after using an older Orcad ($$$) package, I transferred over to Kicad and was surprised it virtually replaced Orcad for me and I had some very nice boards made from it.
Max.

What the TS seems to be after - is whether it can merge multiple designs into one big board for cheaper production costs.

Sounds like a group of people pool a colection of lots of llittle boards and want to merge the whole lot into one great expanse.

Kind of like the exact opposite of taking lots of photos and using software to merge them into a panoramic view - except they don't want the overlap bit.

 

What the TS seems to be after - is whether it can merge multiple designs into one big board for cheaper production costs.

Sounds like a group of people pool a colection of lots of llittle boards and want to merge the whole lot into one great expanse.

Kind of like the exact opposite of taking lots of photos and using software to merge them into a panoramic view - except they don't want the overlap bit.

I thought that is what I said?
I just tried OSH Park that works in a similar fashion.
Max.