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by Animats
3363 days ago
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1) Not in California, which is why attempts to copy Silicon Valley fail. 2) There's far more support online than there was a few years ago. There's good electronic CAD software for free. (KiCAD and LTspice are both free and useful.) Board fab is widely available and cheaper than ever. You can get overnight delivery from DigiKey if you order by 8 PM central time, but it will cost you. If you can wait a few days, no problem. They no longer have a minimum order. The 3rd edition of the Art of Electronics is out, so there's a good intro to modern electronics. (Although those old guys whine about tiny surface mount, instead of telling you how to do it.) There are good message boards. Usenet "sci.electronics.design" is surprisingly useful. 3) The machine shop situation is better than the electronics situation. I've been a TechShop member for years. Their machine shop facilities are good; their electronics facilities are about enough to do a blinking-light Arduino project. |
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And I agree that the online resources are fantastic, but to be fair, that's true no matter where you are in the world. KiCAD and group board buys like OshPark are amazing - I particularly like how KiCAD tries to prevent you from connecting traces that you shouldn't - but they do take ~ a month for your small batch of boards. You really can't complain for the price, but some smaller local fabs would be suh-weeeeeet. And sites like Digikey/Mouser/Jameco are expensive in small quantities, and the shipping adds up quickly if you go with small impulse orders. They also tend to be 5-10x more expensive than taobao for parts more complex than small discretes. The proven provenance is nice, but is it $1.50 vs. $0.20 nice? At those prices, it's worth just putting out several 20-50 piece sample orders and picking out the highest quality listing to grab in bulk.
As for machine shops, I guess you've had better luck than me. I've combed most everywhere North of downtown (couldn't even find anything in the industrial parts of Ballard,) but I'll have to look into TechShop, thanks.