Prototyping boards manufacturing list ...

Werner Almesberger werner at openmoko.org
Fri May 15 10:07:55 CEST 2009


Oops, haven't answered that one yet. Sorry.

Lothar Behrens wrote:
> If there has been done any steps of negiciation it may be out of sync.  
> Please inform me.

Hmm, given that we're still at the beginning of things, it would
seem a bit premature to go beyond keeping contacts and getting general
pricing information for now.

What would be useful soon would be a rough estimate of the cost of
making the PCBs and doing the SMT, as a function of the number of
devices made. With this information, we can try to find out how many
people would be interested in owning such a board.

For the PCB maker, it would be good if they already have some
experience with KiCad, so that they can make any changes their
process requires and don't have to edit Gerbers.

For SMT, it's also important that the company in question can be
reasonably easily reached by people and basic test equipment: the SMT
processes I've seen at Openmoko always involved having a team on-site
on that day (and sometimes night :-) to test the first boards that
come out of SMT, to make sure no trivial mistakes such as incorrectly
placed components, a mixup in the feed, or even soldering problems
make the boards unusable.

So, ideally this wouldn't involve travel to the end of the world and
having to explain to customs officials who normally only get to
handle a donkey or two a day why you're carrying an oscilloscope ...

- Werner



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