Design Your Own PCB
November 10, 2005 | 7 Comments
Alan recently pointed me at Pad2Pad in response to my article about eMachineShop.
Pad2Pad is a way to get custom PCBs manufactured and delivered. You download the software, design the circuitry you’re looking for and then order it up.
Why is this fun and interesting?
Lately Jon, Al, me and others have been repeatedly involved in various electronics projects. Hacking a couple different consoles, building a magstripe reader to find out what identity information is encoded on the cards in our wallets, and planning some new projects. In the meantime Al has become crazy good at soldering increasingly complex things. We’re looking for more challenging projects.
We recently designed a device for building a switch controlled array of LEDs to attach to your office door. This would have a red, yellow, and green light so our administrative assitant could easily tell how busy we are without asking. Her idea, seemed like fun, but we never actually built it…
Now Jon is planning a new-fangled binary clock which should be way cooler than the one on ThinkGeek. Anyway, with these electronics examples you can see why a bunch of guys like us might like the idea of getting custom designed PCBs.
After using the downloadable tool, the one complaint I have is there is no simulator to test your logic. I’ve used LogicWorks a bit, and that is one of it’s strongest features.
Tags: Alan Baker, binary, binary clock, clock, console, electronics, emachineshop, hack, hacking, LED, LEDs, magnetic stripe, magstrip, pad2pad, PCB, PCBs, solder, soldering, thinkgeek
eMachineShop
October 29, 2005 | 4 Comments
Cliff pointed me at eMachineShop months ago. I’ve been patiently waiting for him to blog it so I wouldn’t steal his thunder.
Anyway, they have downloadable CAD software that you can use to mock up any part you want. Then you can instantly get a price on what it would cost to get any number of those parts manufactured. Prices drop substantially if you large quantities.
Having worked next to the engineers at Ruger Pine Tree Castings for a couple years doing computer support, I have a reasonabe understanding of how complex their jobs were. I am amazed this company can run a real machine shop, do engineering, casting, etc for parts on a potentially one off basis. I would be curious what the quality of their merchandise is.
To me this appears to be a great example of a company using long tail as their business plan in an area that was previously reserved for large companies with big clients ordering lots of parts.
Tags: casting, emachineshop, engineer, engineering, investment casting, long tail, machine shop, part, parts, pine tree castings, ruger