[paddi91]

Shameless plug here, we're just working on getting a PCB & assembly service like Seeedstudio to Europe. What we're trying to achieve is to get close to prices from China but with zero quantities. That means you don't have to take care of stock, as soon as you need one we manufacture it. Beside that all manufacturing is done in Germany and we take care of logistics.

Anyone interested take a look at https://go.aisler.net, if you'd like to participate in our beta assembly just drop me a line at [e-mail]

[jwr]

Finally, something being done in Europe! Sign me up. I've been using Seeed, ITEAD & OSHPark for my hobby stuff, and MacroFab for work stuff (eyeing closely PCBng which gets a lot of things right, but doesn't support all my components yet), but all of those have the same problem: shipping. You either pay with time (3 weeks to get your boards back) or with money (>$60 for quick shipping).

I believe there is a lot that can be done to reduce the cost of electronics assembly and I'm very happy to see something happening here in Europe.

[Libermentix]

Hi jwr,

co-founder of paddi91 here. What your are saying is essentially what has driven us to start investigating into this.

We come from the Open source hardware and hobby electronics world, and have backgrounds in mechanical engineering and information technology. So we wondered how we can add a European flavor to it: Lots of high quality manufacturers here in (central) Europe, but with a focus on High-End High-Scale series production, both for PCB and PCB assembly. We collaborate with them, automate most of the production process for them, and thus are able to offer competitive prices for low quantities.

We started investigating into this because we want every OSHW project to be reproducible by others. So that if you are an author and publish your designs with us (we synchronize with github if you want), other people (and the many others that are not able to design or assemble the project) can receive a copy of the current version. And since not everyone can assemble by themselves, we try to make it as simple as possible which is the reason for the PCB Assembly pilot. Here we use similar tools to automate everything. It should therefore be affordable to re-produce any project on-demand. Seriously, if you want to help make open source electronics more accessible come and join us with your project for the assembly beta, the more projects, the better, as it improves the test-suite ;-) feel free to either send an email to patrick via [e-mail] (my co-founder) or contact me directly via [e-mail]

By the way: the cost parameters for assembly would be the following: cost of the pcb x 2 + cost of parts. no minimum quantity required. All boards come with green soldermask, white top and bottom legend, and will have ENIG surface plating. We only use high-class FR4, 1.6mm TG150 material.

[jwr]

So, I did a quick check, and you're currently over 4x more expensive than OSHpark for 2-layer PCBs, but the assembly proposition looks much more promising. I will definitely keep an eye on your project.

[jburgess777]

You might want to look at these UK companies who have helped produce the badges for the last two EMFCamp events: http://ragworm.eu/ http://www.hcduk.com/

[BillyClark]

Since there many guys using Fusion PCB service in Seeed, Here I share the couopn code for the first 50 users :

【FusionPCB11】

Every one use this coupon code in Fusion will obtain a 20% off discount. The coupon code is valid before November.

[kasbah]

You pivoting from your OSHW platform Patrick? This is Kaspar, I think we might have met at FOSDEM 2 years ago? I gave a talk about my browser extension: https://1clickbom.com

[paddi91]

Yeah, we met back in 2015 I guess! Will you be there in 2017? Would you be interested in some exchange over 1clickbom?

We noticed that a platform for OSHW without making the actual hardware available is kinda useless. That's why we started to thinking about, how do we make these projects available cheaply?

[StavrosK]

What's your pricing like? I don't see anything on the site, and I don't have a PCB on my phone right now to upload to see if I can get a price.

If your price is comparable to DirtyPCBs, you have a new customer.

[paddi91]

On the page is a pricing calculator, just scroll down a bit. As I said we're trying to get a low price on low quantities, if you only need 3 PCBs (e.g. for prototyping) we're cheaper than DirtyPCBs.

[paddi91]

As I noticed some interest here, I'd like you to test the PCB service. Use coupon code 'hn102016' on checkout to get a 15% discount on your order. Would be happy to get some feedback on the PCB quality!