Our great sponsors
-
WorkOS
The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.
-
-
InfluxDB
Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.
There are other benefits: A PCB design can be shared so that others can fabricate it themselves. (Or modify it if they wish). A PCB design will likely have a schematic, too, which can be studied.
I'd also bet that PCB projects are more likely to inspire better PCB projects. -- Or at least, the domain I've tried my hand at has been PCBs for custom mechanical keyboards.
e.g. I've seen boards inspired by https://github.com/hsgw/plaid such as https://github.com/coseyfannitutti/discipline or https://github.com/rtitmuss/torn and I think there are several popular split keyboard designs which basically descend from https://github.com/MakotoKurauchi/helix
There are other benefits: A PCB design can be shared so that others can fabricate it themselves. (Or modify it if they wish). A PCB design will likely have a schematic, too, which can be studied.
I'd also bet that PCB projects are more likely to inspire better PCB projects. -- Or at least, the domain I've tried my hand at has been PCBs for custom mechanical keyboards.
e.g. I've seen boards inspired by https://github.com/hsgw/plaid such as https://github.com/coseyfannitutti/discipline or https://github.com/rtitmuss/torn and I think there are several popular split keyboard designs which basically descend from https://github.com/MakotoKurauchi/helix
There are other benefits: A PCB design can be shared so that others can fabricate it themselves. (Or modify it if they wish). A PCB design will likely have a schematic, too, which can be studied.
I'd also bet that PCB projects are more likely to inspire better PCB projects. -- Or at least, the domain I've tried my hand at has been PCBs for custom mechanical keyboards.
e.g. I've seen boards inspired by https://github.com/hsgw/plaid such as https://github.com/coseyfannitutti/discipline or https://github.com/rtitmuss/torn and I think there are several popular split keyboard designs which basically descend from https://github.com/MakotoKurauchi/helix
There are other benefits: A PCB design can be shared so that others can fabricate it themselves. (Or modify it if they wish). A PCB design will likely have a schematic, too, which can be studied.
I'd also bet that PCB projects are more likely to inspire better PCB projects. -- Or at least, the domain I've tried my hand at has been PCBs for custom mechanical keyboards.
e.g. I've seen boards inspired by https://github.com/hsgw/plaid such as https://github.com/coseyfannitutti/discipline or https://github.com/rtitmuss/torn and I think there are several popular split keyboard designs which basically descend from https://github.com/MakotoKurauchi/helix
(1) Find someone you can pester with questions. (2) Understand the basic workflow. (3) Start by copying and modifying existing designs. (4) Build solutions using functional modules, and version these. (5) Bench test everything. (6) Be aware of startup and edge conditions when designing. (7) Take notes on all design changes or prospective changes, hypotheses and findings. This process will greatly accelerate your learning. This is easier if you have LXI-capable equipment and can capture test information easily. https://github.com/lxi-tools/lxi-tools
Both pcbway and jlcpcb will cleanly cut your entire board outline with no panelization tabs. You can draw any arbitrary shapes in your edge.cuts and get it.
oshpark leaves rat bites that you have to sand down and clean up if the board outline matters to you. Worse, if you have castellated half holes, the rat bites can land right in the middle of what was supposed to be edge contacts.
I have boards that are small like the size of a dip28, where the entire length of the two long sides are castellated, and they are edge contacts to fit in a socket, not for soldering, and the entire board snaps into a carrier so essentially all 4 sides need to be clean and match the drawing. I have to sand and clean up oshpark boards, and live with a little bit of defect in the castellated holes. I don't have to do anything with jlc or pcbway boards. They arrive perfectly clean edged and ready to use.
I have one board that is only about 1cm square, but not square, it has a complicated outline, and both jlc and pcbway just pop it out with no fuss the same as any other order for the same nothing cost. I don't know how they even hold on to the tiny board to cut the outline. It does appear to be traditionally routered, not laser or water jet.
https://github.com/bkw777/TPDD_Cable
pics of an earlier version with slightly different outline.
https://github.com/bkw777/Teeprom
I've orderdered several times from oshpark because over the last 5 or so years I've iterated the design slightly many times. From oshpark I have received different results at different times from the same board outline. One time was a single rat bite in the middle of the short ends, leaving the castellations fully clear. Another time was two rat bites on each end at the corners, but on the short sides, again leaving the long sides clear. But most of the time the tabs are placed randomly other than being spaced apart.
Even the buggered ones were usable, it's just that one was usabel after cleaning up, and still slightly uncosmetic even after cleaning up because you can only sand down not fill in, while the other was fully cosmetic out of the box.
I give all my boards nice rounded corners now just because. It's even functional not just cosmetic. Any time a part has to fit into another part, there has to be some reliefe either on the inside or outside part, they both can't have perfectly sharp inside and outside corners and fit into each other. It's often not possible, and usually not desirable because of stress riser, to manufacture perfectly sharp inside corners, and so you need the outside corner of the mating part to be cut down. Or if the inside part must have a sharp corner, then you need to cut out extra relief in the inside corner of the outside part, like adding a round hole centered on the corner, both for stress-riser reasons and just to ensure the part will always be able to fit without interferance.
In these parts above, the drawing for the carrier has imaginary perfect inside corners, and in real life the printer doesn't quite make a knife-edge inside corner of course. And the pcb has slightly rounded corners. If the fab couldn't do it for me with the router, I'd do it by sanding.
I would say this particular project is a special case with needs that most people won't need to worry about, so I'm not saying oshpark is a bad choice. It's just a difference, and the whole point of the article was to compare and show differences.