Hi welcome to Part 5 of the Nixie Tube Display project. Our Part 4 we left off our actually doing the routing for the PCB and so it'll be click here up in the card, up in the top right corner. If you haven't watched that, that's like how to go through and actually route and layout a board. And by the way, there was actually one error in this board which nobody.

Well, only one person found this error. is that my our packages here. these Esso packages I actually used the narrow version of these packages and the chip. the seven for what isn't the certain sorry the T pick six B Five Nine Five only comes in the wide bodied package.

So yeah, trap for young players and well I didn't spot that and goofed it up completely. It would have been okay if I went and got the board manufactured. It would have been fine because you can actually bend the legs under these chips. You can actually bend them, bend them back under, so turn it into a J lead package where it comes back under and then sort of them down like that as like a as like an old-school you know, J leaded package or whatever.

So yeah it would because there's not a huge amount of width difference in there so you know we could have clutched it. wouldn't have been a showstopper, wouldn't have been great for production. Of course it would have sucked. You would have fixed it for production, but given that this is a one-off board, you know it would have been fine.

But anyway, we went through or des fixed it actually David went through and fixed it David to is over there say hi David oh he's in it. yes he's in the same room and so. but an interesting thing happened right? So I just I gave him the task of going through and changing the from a narrow package which here the pins were up here somewhere. I could do a side by side but there are you know like there was three or four millimeters in it or something like that.

so change at all. but that changed all the routing and everything. but we haven't got like all our machines set up and all our libraries set up and everything yet. So I sent him the you know, the piece of the project files and everything else and he added it on his version about him and actually swapped.

Um, you'll notice that I used SMD resistors before but now it's got these through-hole resistors in here and and Dave didn't know that I because he hadn't seen my video so he didn't know that I used SMD and in just as soon as you would that the PCB package is right and somehow swapped all of the SMD resistors to through-hole and these ones on the bottom. I've had to change back manually by the way. so what it did is we believe it changed the well. it definitely added.

the package reference in here is axial. Oh for and it actually deleted or added an extra axial oh for in here and changed them all and it didn't warn him or anything, it just happened. so he just rerouted it based on the that and I got these and the board bottom you know I was a bit confused for a few minutes and like yeah, did I use through-hole resistors before? but no, so we're not sure if that's a bug in out, iam or whatnot. But anyway, so I've just left them I've changed the ones on the bottom to through-hole sorry too.

SMD but I've left the ones on the top just because to change those would require going in and rerouting a whole bunch of stuff. It would be like I just couldn't be bothered. This is just a one-off for it. So anyway, so what we're going to do today I'm sorry for the waffle at the start is we're going to actually get this board manufactured so we've finished our routing.

What is the next step to getting it manufactured? So let's go through it now. First of all, you'd want to I probably said this before, but you want to use the 3d view and this is where 3d view is fantastic, not for the packages. In fact, you can get rid of the packages and just look at things like solder mask expansion for example in there do I have solder mask between all of my pins and you can capture all. you can get this sort of stuff for using DRC rules and stuff like that.

but you know nothing beats a good visual look at what your board has physically going to look like when you get it manufactured and that's the great thing about 3d viewing. So yes, whilst all of these are, you know 3d models are all great and everything. you actually want to disable those. So if we go to PCB down here and a PCB window and then 3d models down here, we can actually disable those 3d bodies showing up and bingo this is what our blank board is going to look like.

This is what it's going to come back from the manufacturer as and you can see you know that you've got solder mask between stuff you can see whether you've got tented vias or not which we do have. some are tinted via like this one here is untended. Oh look at that so that's a that's a complete where was it there it is. That's a complete fail so that's is it.

Yeah it was that one was it, it wasn't tented There we go force the tinting on top. I may have covered this in the previous video and you can see actually the holes are will see the holes attented there which means so them attention just means the solder mask goes over the holes basically and not always. If you've got really large holes it obviously you know it's difficult to completely cover them, but if they're small enough then you can do that. We don't care about under the chips because as I said, this is going to go into a box which will have like a just a simple rectangular cutout on here.

So anything that looks through here like this will be visible. so if you've got like components in here they will be visible. If you've got you know traces in there or whatever it is, they will all be visible. So in this case that should be all fine and dandy.

So you just look for stuff like that silkscreen over pads and other stuff. You can do all this as DRC's which we'll find out in a minute, but this is a one-off board. We simply don't care like you know there's a dot here. For example, you know, a silkscreen dot for pin, one marker of that sort, two, two, three package there.

but with it like we just don't care right? So you would fuss about this sort of stuff if it was owed. You know, a proper production board. You're doing it for a client or a company or something that's professional and everything else. Should you know you'd go to town.

but we don't care to one-off. So what we want to do now is we want to do ADRC a Design Rule check. So we go into Design Rule check and I've shown a pretty sure schon DRC in the previous video did I If not my apologies, we run our DRC check and once again, all of the electrical you can enable and disable all sorts of various stuff in here. What you want actually checked is the online one whether you night you do it live or via the batch thing which is what we're running now.

So anyway, let's just assume that we've got all of our settings set up correct and Bingo! This is the ultimate goal before you get a board manufactured is to have zero DRC error. So all your traces are connected, they all your connectivity matches all the pins. There's no breaks in any of the tracks, there's no shorts and any of the outputs. I've covered this in previous videos and stuff like that and you've got.

there's no violations like where we're checking clearance constraint. Okay, so we've got point three, eight, one millimeters. What's that in here? we go. If we switch back to Imperial, we're now in Imperial look at the bottom right corner there and bottom left corner.

sorry and we run our DRC again. Design Rule check. Bingo! It should give it to us in Mils. There we go.

So we've got 15th our clearance 15 milk mil is the same as our fifteenth our clearance. We've got no short circuit constraints, we've got no unrouted nets we've got with constraints. so we're our 10 mil. So we've got 10 mil.

clearance, 10 mil widths, and oh yeah, we're checking whole whole clearances. All sorts of stuff. We can check a lot more, but we don't care. So one off board, it's looking good.

It's looking good in 3d View mode. The vibe. It's all about the vibe. the vibes happening.

It's all there. So next step to get their board manufactured is Gerber's I think I've spent quite a significant amount of time in the previous video talking about our jobs and that's a different way to automate this sort of process. Automate doing DRC's automate this board release process as it's called. you do a DRC yeah.

I will do the Gerber file generation UNCF old generation. You might export a bill of materials. You might do all that sort of stuff. We're not going to go through that, that's in like an hour specific thing.

I Want to keep this as generic as possible? So what we want is fabrication outputs here and we want Now go over files. We won't do the Grbac. The new Gerber x2 I will just do the traditional Gerber files. inches or millimeters doesn't really matter, You know everything.

Such fine resolution. Anyway, the manufacturers are just going to handle it. It's not a problem and format two to five format explains down there. Two to three has one mill resolution so you don't want that.

You know it's okay for a rough board like this. maybe. but two to four has point one mill resolution and so two to five, you just want the highest resolution possible just because the vibe. So we want to go in here and we want to plot our various layers.

Okay, so let's what. and these are going to be the file name extensions down here for the ones we want. So what do we want? We want our top overlay because we want the manufacturer to print us the silkscreen overlay. That's the white one there with all the component designators.

We do not want a paste mask because we're not getting this manufactured professionally with a solder mask, stencil, or solder paste stencil. so we don't need that. So we want the top solder mask. Because we're getting, we basically only get a standard double-sided silk-screened solder mask board.

So we want to do the solder, we want to do the top layer, we want to do the bottom layer, the bottom solder, no bottom paste, and we want the bottom overlay as well because we get manufactured this in on the prototype PCB panel which generally includes top and bottom overlays or top and bottom silkscreen. if you hear me use the word silkscreen I refer to overlay and vice versa. So it's the same thing. silk screens Just an old term for it.

No one actually does real silk screens anymore, but you know it's just a die-hard term and then mechanical layer one. In this case, let's actually, well, I'm sure I showed in the previous video. I Did the board outline as mechanical layer one as some traces. so we will include that and we'll see it so we don't.

This is a real simple board. We don't have any else fancy so and we do not want to add the mechanical layers to all of the plots. We just like you want to separate it out. There'd only be specific reasons manufacturer specific reasons that you would do that.

So they're all the layers we want. top and bottom, silkscreen, solder, mask and trace, and drill drawings. We're not fussed about any drill drawings A pitches we would just embed the averages in. that would leave it all default.

We're not mucking around here now. This is a reasonably important one because you have to define the size of the film. I'm Just go. and this is a massive size film.

What is it? Twenty thousand mill by sixteen thousand mill film. The film means the actual board size on the generated Gerber file. so it's more than big enough for any sized board that you might want. But the reference is important.

so the position of your board on the film. We want the reference button to be relative to this origin down here, which is this origin zero marker that we set. so it basically sets it smack in the middle and then like in the middle of our film. That's well, you've got a center on film option, but a reference to relative option.

Relative origin is just fine. So separate file per layer. everything. optimized, change, just all ginned.

Default stuff. We don't want to muck around with anything here. Our suppress leading zeros. don't worry about that.

So default and we go. Okay, that's it. It's general up. You saw it down the bottom.

Bingo! All of our Gerber files have been have been generated and it generates a Cam Tastic file. Dot Cam over here. This is an Altium thing. I Think Altium bought Cam Tastic or something Donkey's years ago and this is now not our PCB file anymore.

This is actually and a composite view of all of our Gerber layers. superimpose one on top of the other and we can view individual files down here so we can go cam tastic documents. And here's our individual layers because our team has a built-in Gerber viewer. Basically and good.

You know it. it works. Okay, good enough for just viewing. it's not.

It's not the best thing in the world. there are better third-party Gerber viewer programs, but anyway, this allows us to simply go in there and look at the individual layers. So now we can see that's our bottom and you see how it actually has no border and where the origin is here. Okay, so that orange in is important.

Is that that origin? Otherwise, if we said Center on film, the origin would be way down in the other corner or whatever. Okay, that was a bit of a display bug bed. Oh, look at that display bug. Oops.

I Don't know if my screen capture is interfering with that or not, but I can certainly see that and you notice how it didn't add. We didn't have that option to add the board outline we simply don't need. Okay, so that's GBL So that's BL is bottom layer. So GBL stance of Gerber body Gerber Bottom layer G Bit that's sort of like an industry standard file you know.

naming convention extension: Convention There's our bottom silkscreen. our bottom overlay V O stands for bottom overlay and BS does not stand for what you think of right is that stands for Gerber bottom solder mask. So that self solder mask expansion on the bottom and this is our mechanical layer. As I said, because I manually put those traces all have I left a gap up there to see that left a gap up there.

It doesn't matter. they're going to know what it is. They're going to know that that's my board outline and I've just good it. It's going to make no difference to them so I wouldn't even bother fixing that.

Maybe if it was a professional. you know, seeing in a real complex board I might fix that. but it's obviously this is just a plain square board. That's really all they need to know.

And there's our top layer traces so it all looks nice and clean. You know it looks like it's generated nicely. our top overlay yep, there it all is and our top solder mask. so it all looks hunky-dory happy as Larry.

So we're almost done that. We've generated our Gerber files, but the Gerber files are just the film files that generate the masks that manufacture the board. But that doesn't have any information to do with actually drilling the board. so we have to generate NC drill files there call it.

So if we go to fabrication outputs again, we go NC drill files. and once again, you can automate all this so you know it's a single, although practically a single click to do all sorts of stuff. generating Gerber's inside your files, Bill of Materials and Dr CS and all sorts of stuff if you want. But yet once again, we're going to do the interesting 2/5 here.

Suppress trailing 0 as reference relative to origin. You want to make sure that matches your one before. otherwise the place you're going to be they will not line up when you when imports into their cam software both the NC drill file and the Gerber's They've got a special cam software that they do not use out in. By the way, if you think the manufacturers will import your Gerber files into Altium and then print them, that's not how it works.

They've got special cam software that handles all this stuff. The origins stop the same. nothing will line up. I mean they? they? Oh, they probably wouldn't be silly enough to just go and press manufacture right and and do it, but they'd have to manually fix it and I'll probably charge you for that or they'd come back and tell you or something like that.

They should come back and tell you hey, you don't know what you're doing. You know in a nice about way and your origins don't match up. But the problem with PCB manufacturers is they often will not tell you anything. They will just fix stuff so you can be sending them boards for years in the wrong format that you know and they will just fix you know things.

A lot of them are not good at telling you that hey, you know this isn't the best way to do it. Here's what you should do, which is good in that you're most often get working boards back. But yeah, you know they don't like to help you out in any way in that respect. Which: I It's not a great thing because that doesn't help them out, it just extra work for them to do.

but I guess they just secretly charge you for it anyway. Reference relatives origin same as before. optimized. We don't want any of this.

Generate separate for drill files for plated and non plated holes. We're not about that this time. Use drilled slot commands. We're not fussy about that.

We've got no slots or anything. We're just going to go bog-standard Thank you very much. Import drill data. Just leave all this standard.

We won't change any of this sort of stuff. And bingo there is our once again it's Generator Cam Tastic Fire. Once again, the origin is over here. So if you merge those two cam tastic documents that all overlay and everything else.

So here is the actual file. So we have generated Algirdas and we've generated LNC drill files. We're ready to go to the manufacturer. Whoo! All right.

So we have generated our files. They're going to be in this sub directory here, project outputs, and here are all the wonderful files that we've got all our Gerber files. Now it's generated a few additional files which we don't necessarily need to send it to the manufacturer. like I Don't think we had any slots in here, right? So our there were there any slots and it says there's the odd slot.

Oh yes, Yes, yes, we do have slot. sorry the DC Jack over here. the 12-volt DC jack is done with a slot there. the NC Drill file commands for actually drilling those slots.

put the use this drill size, put it in there, move it X millimeters in this direction, etc. and then we've got the round holes. These are most of our holes in here, so once again it comes. If you want to know the format here, it's got like T1 stands for tool 1 so this is the tool.

These are plated files I shouldn't be going through the format and this is the N and in inches. We probably should have done this. Actually, we should have done our NC drill file in millimeters. shouldn't we have David Yes, David's not in in the background.

Let's do it again in millimeters. And the reason we're going to redo it like we don't have to. This is just if purely for our entertainment purposes. really.

So let's up. I wasn't David's laughing in the background there export and see joy. He's a big fan. Boy of everything.

Metric NC Drill files Again, let's try that again in millimeters. just that so it's easier for us to read. And technically, they do use millimeter A drill bits these days. every you know 0.05 millimeter increments or they'll have a whole stack of on the machine in like no point.

Oh, five millimeters or whatever it is and they will increment those so that they would have just like their software would have automatically handled that and converted the Imperial to the nearest metric drill it would have been. You know, would have been fine. But just for kicks, Just for kicks. We will redo that and we'll go back to our file over here and round holes.

We are now Metric Thank you very much. Played at holes no point. Six millimeters are to be the V R 0.85 no point nine. and once again, you get charged for these are what are called tool changes so you actually want to minimize these.

So if you don't, a real complex board and you're importing libraries from everywhere and they might have subtly different drill sizes, you know one might be more point eight instead of not point eight five. And you might like if you've got a real hodgepodge design getting parts from and libraries from everywhere, you might end up with like twenty different drill hole sizes. So you want to consolidate those that would often be a step which I didn't cover here you would for a professional board that you're getting especially high volume manufactured. You know, when it's a big deal.

this prototype doesn't matter a rat's bump, but you know you don't want to have twenty tool sizes because that'll slow down your board. They won't be able to produce as many, they won't be able to produce them as fast enough. They'll charge you for that extra two machine time when it's got it going and changed the tool from the not 0.85 to the naught point eight. Oh, you know so often hole size consolidation is another entire step in the process, which we didn't do here.

but just be aware of that. And then you've got none plated holes, Four millimeters. They'd be the big mounting holes in the corners here. and there's so then they go to what there it is.

And here's all the commands. The NC drill file commands moving X-direction blah blah blah blah blah, etc. And that's all the file is. But you don't need to know that I just showed you that because ok, some other files in here which you don't have to send to the manufacturer.

For example, this Drr that's a drill report file. so if we open that can give you some valuable information, you know. here's the tools. That's stuff I said before, number of hole counts and all that sort of jazz and total tool travel that determines how long it's going to take them to actually drill this board because you know it takes time for the NC drill machine to move from one spot to the next.

So the tool travel time in distances can matter and stuff like that. So you know we don't have to include those files. It doesn't matter at all. So in the general you just want to zip them all up.

So what we want to do: The Aperture file I Don't think you have to include that these days, but I just do as a matter of course. and I also include the Drr just because they might want to see it. It might be nice from we don't need external rep file but we need all our Gerber's but you like just include everything. Why not right? Simulation Netlist Like we don't need that so we might actually leave that out so we'll highlight all those and we don't.

We need our of course our text files once again. I'm pretty sure they don't need the Aperture library and stuff like that, but I did like just send it like just send them everything. It doesn't really matter right? So they'll just ignore the one so we will zip that up. Project outputs lip, thank you very much.

There it is and we're ready to send our zip file off to the manufacturer. Beauty Now just before we actually go to some PCB manufacturers and get quotes and things online. Quotes: Just a quick word about board size here. Now people these days just expect, you know.

prototype board. You know, Dirt cheap PCBs Or oh sheesh, cogs or something like that. You know, five, ten bucks a board or something like that? No, right, it's not going to be five or ten dollars. Why? Because look at the board information.

it's about the size. Sorry. Go: two millimeters board sizes? Yeah, okay. board information: It is a hundred and eighty five millimeters by Sixty nine millimeters.

Now that's not a huge board by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a much bigger than the average person's doing a little Arduino shield these days missiles to buy in this cheap boards, right? But 185 by Sixty nine? That's the out 20 square inches. right? in the old money, right? So and let's go to Ashish Park For example, you pay five dollars per square inch shred standard two layer board. Yeah, you get three copies of your board I don't need three copies, right? But hey, that's a hundred bucks, right? It's not a five $10 board because you pay when you're taking up a large part of a prototype panel surface area. they're going to charge you for it like a wounded ball.

So yeah, don't go wildly down in the comments. who you can get it for ten bucks at here at Note: you can't Okay, the board is bigger than your average shield now. I may not actually use AA Spark to get at manufacturing. In fact, one of the PCB manufacturer will see later actually gave me a half-priced coupon.

So I might just use their service just because they gave me a coupon. I'm a tight-ass right? But um, hey, let's let's stay. Well, let's try Ash Park because I've never actually gone through and done a full thing with them I May not get it ordered, but let's just you know, select the files on the computer. Can we drag and drop? We go select.

Can't drag and drop I Want to drag and drop Bugger? No. For now, here's one thing like Ash: Park and pretty much oh, you saw it there before. They actually accept Eagle Board files and Kicad files directly as well I Don't recommend you do that like any decent PCB manufacturer will accept Altium files directly. So the Altium dot you know PCB file or whatever it is right.

you can. Technically, you can just send them that PCB file and they will get your board made. They may not question it at all, but it's It's not the most proletariat Gerber's and do everything else is that you can check everything and you know you manually know what you see is what you're going to get with our Gerber's and the NCL files and everything else. So I highly recommend learning how to do generate Gerber's and doing it that way.

And don't not just lazily upload your Eagle board file if you're doing a one-off Okay, you know it might work just fine, but you know, if you want to do anything semi-professionally you want to control the process. Gerber files is a way to do it. That's how all your professionals do it. So two layer board of seven point two nine inches by two point seven inches.

It looks like it all works in as an Altium zip file. there. yo. it's automatically recognized it detected.

unsupported drilled slots. There you go. Don't be support, doesn't ash Park Support Slots on your project contains two drill files. We've merged them.

Maybe that was the issue. Ah, now something's gone horribly wrong here. It does not like this. Look at this.

our drill file. our board bottom. It has not expanded that to scale. so I don't know it is not working.

Top layers worked just fine and dandy. The GTL file the Gerber top layer bottom layer looks spectacular. That's all lined up. It's all.

Everything's hunky. got solder muster. All good. The board outline.

There it is. Gm1 it's it. Knows it's a board outline. Pretty industry standard method of doing it.

So I guess they know that that you know. use one of the mechanical layers is just two broad outlines to take that. so it's really quite groovy. But I'm going to be concerned about the drill that's not going to work so we might have to fix that.

That's not what this video is going to be about because I don't intend to use Aa Spark. Anyway, they're not hugely quick. They're not hugely cheap for a big board like this. I'm let's go look at some others, but yeah, normally that should have worked.

so maybe there's a bug somewhere. or I didn't use something that wasn't compatible. They actually tell you there you go. Absolute coordinates are all they wanted.

Absolute. They wanted absolute and not the origin. Let me see if I can fix this just out of curiosity. Okay, I'd love to show you a schmuck working, but I reapplied it by removing the trailing zeros and four three and the whatnot using the absolute origin.

but it just hasn't worked. so I'm not happy with that. I'm just going to yeah, assume that there's some quirky little thing happening and we'll move on. Okay I think I officially give up I went to the effort Agenor and regenerate all the in absolute origin using Imperial 4/3 Like the whole like to match the NCL files and it does not work so that maybe it's the merge the merge of the two files.

it didn't like that or something and it's like not nothing works even following their sort of instructions there. now because all our like piece of E manufacturers are always chopping and changing. Who's the best, who's the cheapest is the fastest, is the best quality lover. Blah.

you know you can't keep up these days and more PCB prototype manufacturers and you poke a crow probe at something believable anyway. so I'm going to use like a PCB shopper Service: I've never used it in anger before. it searches a lot of different actually in these ones. 25 different PCB manufacture do Shenzhen thing ash Park as well Breadboard Killer which is an Australian one dirty PCBs Dirty Cheap reminds me of Acadec err dirty deeds done dirt cheap dirty PCBs Done dirt cheap Anyway, Thunderstruck Yeah! Um, so let's go in.

185 by Oh 69 sorry 69 millimeters are two layers least expensive color. We're just not fussy. It's the prototype thing. we don't care, only we can do both.

but I really really need top You know? I'm a tight ass right? so we don't need that bottom still cream. It's rubbish. In fact, we don't even need the top seal. Turing Really.

but you know you're probably going to get it for free. whatever because it's on a prototype panel. surface. Finish: cheapest.

You know we don't need like gold or anything like that. not know that rubbish at one point standing. one point six millimeter thickness, standard one ounce copper, no thicker rubbish. ten mill trace in space.

We've got a very coarse board here. no fine tolerances so it's going to anyone can make this. You can make this home with your own laser printer. transparent overlays I can do like a date at home.

easy even down the six six sometimes at home I've done way my deep dark past. double-sided even anyway. ten mil. so because that will have an impact on your price, the what services are available to do your minimum trace and space.

so 10 is plenty minimum drill size nor point six millimeters. you can select either I think our one was point six millimeters smallest VR no gold fingers, no stencil because we're not stencils the SMD now stand so a lot of you a lot of them will include like a free mylar Co cheaper smile, a stance or something like that. Maybe you know a fewer your higher price months might give you a free stainless steel stencil or something like that. which is nice if you want.

Certainly, if you're doing a board you know you're going to reflow oven it. Yeah, you throw an offensive please. What were these certifications? Don't want any of that rubbish number designs, one quantity, one Australia and default time you can set the number of business. Let's go to fault.

Let's get prices. This is what we want to see here. We go here, we go. This is really if it's quite jazzy Lou This right? So Seed Studio? you know? Look, it's going to cost for five boards.

Okay, there you go. 712 A That's pretty good. That's pretty cheap from seed in it. Wow.

I got the right dimensions even Nine days. Oh sorry Easy A de Bas beat them. has it? Is it sorted by cheapness Wow Look at this I Like this service. this is really quite and it jump link to jump to the order page as well.

Great 43 days who registered email DHL Express So that's a total boards for shipping. that's pretty good actually 56 bucks. that's pretty cheap from easy EDA in China Wow green. You know standard green solder mask or whatever but that's that's pretty Jersey Seed Studios Also, you know punching above their weight they're at 68 bucks or PCB PCB way a lot of people are talking about PCBs way at the moment they've got a good process that follows.

You can I think it's PCB way you follow step by step through the production process which is quite good. Ackerman Which one I've got the half-price coupon from. might be them anyway. a DHL including D at your postage.

So the board itself is okay. Well, you can get it for 17 total actually. but then the shipping of course, keeping costs more than the boards do. so that's actually I'm very surprised at that.

For a board of this size, that is quite surprising. So you can see this is a really good tool to look dirty. PCBs Plus they will say they're the cheapest. Well, not for a Board of you know, one hundred and eighty five millimeters width.

for example, it's not very high. it's only like sixty nine millimeters high, which isn't much, but that width adds PCB card. I've been using PCB card for like a decade or something. They were one of the one of the cheapest pioneering companies in terms of our shared panel service.

when PCB card originally came out. that was pretty groundbreaking and breadboard killer here in Australia And they don't make them here in Australia they just subcontract out. So you know, like even that's like 12 days delivery. So once again, you've got a PCB zone in New Zealand hi Richard So there you know.

Then we start getting into the hundred dollar region. But the quality of their boards is really good and in five days, right? So that's you know that's pretty quick, so you know you compare that to. you know? well we can have it nine days up here. total days for those.

So you Know these cheap months? Yeah, you know, eight nine days and that's it. That'd be working days to probably I know that PCB cart are there are they're usually specified working days. So anyway, PCB with a five day lead time and of course if you want our that's that's why I was probably of basing. Let's say we wanted in four days, right? Let's go do that again.

Let's go. Do you know we're We're in a hurry, we want our board. damn it. And now you see, it'd be much more pricey, you know.

So if you're happy to wait, the OPC B-zone in New Zealand is going to be the cheapest so far at a hundred and fifty-five including DHL. So you're going to get that puppy in three days. 131 bucks. That's not much to when I was a boy, right? It's known that too quick that was unheard of to get a prototype board for a hundred and thirty bucks.

It was like, you know, seven, eight hundred bucks. 500 bucks for a new you know, whiz-bang cheap service because you pay for the whole panel. but now they've got everyone's doing their shared panel services and that's you know. Awesome price for three lead three days lead time.

So there you go New Zealand Who knew right? PCB Everyone things are China's the cheapest you know, not according to a PCB shopper here. Fear for business days. Maybe if we get five because five is a more sort of standard fast process time. I think we'll have a few more choices here.

This is this works great. It's just sucking the data from all these PCBs now it's got a few more few more. But once again, PCB Zone is winning Answer: Actually there must be a quirk in this because the other companies offer it. So why it's not, they do offer such a service.

So why they're not showing up I don't know. because if you're going to PCB card or PCB way or anyone like that, if you go into their website directly they will give you an option for you know, really fast turnaround boards. So yeah, I don't think this is complete I would not take this as gospel. so yeah here is an example of that.

If I go over to PCB wave for example. What: they close you now for two days holidays. Too bad if you want to get your boards made like as in right now they won't start from a day. Also I'm be where Chinese New Year two to three days.

Look at this. So I put in like all mate you know, 185 but 69 only with different designs on panel one and then they're going to give me five boards is the minimum you can get made and they're going to do that for 32 bucks with two to three days turn. But of course you know once you choose DHL to Australia that's still pretty good. 57 US dollars First three to five.

That's see, that's really good. We didn't get that option over in. PCB I PCB away here it is 114 bucks with six days. so there's something going on there.

Something's not right. The west side is sorry PCB Shopper is a failed us I'm afraid and check this out. Express 24 hours 55 U.s. bucks for five boards.

You've got to be kidding me. David thinks it's David thinks they're lying. Why do you think they're lying David Crazy Five: It's crazy fast isn't it? For that price? That's just insane. How big must their facility be to have a spare line for you to bump everything out like you know? That's just.

that's nuts. It's 24 hours turn. I rather have the board's quicker than another. My digi-key parts almost.

Wow Tempted to try. Okay I'm on the Lro website. They actually offered me a 50% discount coupon. They have a ridiculous array of options here I Just wanted to show you this like this is a five pieces to layer PCB It seems expensive in quote marks, but this is a rush twelve hour job rush twelve.

It was shipped in two working days, so whether or not what they actually manufacture it in twelve hours, but it takes them two days to ship it I don't or is that include shipping? I'm not sure, not sure, but it's too crazy. and if you go back here like look, they have like a four layer piece, you can get like a hundred pieces of a four layer board. I Haven't costed this out on other side so it may actually be a similar price or cheaper. but five centimeters by five centimeters? Okay, but what if you wanted like five centimeters by thirty centimeters like it sounds 2369 bucks for a four layer board with all the bells and whistles, right? Well no, it doesn't make a gold a 60 bucks? Okay, well whoop-dee-do 400 pieces of a four layer board? At least what are we living in? This is insanely cheap.

All right. So I'm looking at the five pieces two layer PCB here. I've got to choose the 10 centimeter by 20 centimeter max because I'm 185 by 69 so it's not in, you know, ideally optimized. You've got two jumps up there, but red red grids, solder muffs goes faster.

Everyone knows that so choose the rear. We don't want 12 bucks real gold, but check this out. Stencil Stencil with frame I'm going to like that this must be a stainless steel stencil, right? And because you only get stainless steel stencils and frames, well, they only ones that come with frame option. Oh so a 30 centimeter of a 40 centimeter it's pretty decent size for 18 bucks.

$18 allows the ADA It's practically free when I was a boy. Like a 500 buck stainless steel stencil with sheep As right, This looks like we're living in a world where things are practically free and people take it for granted. Unbelievable. So any way I can rush 12-hour army.

Ah, wouldn't want to go back to the old days, that's for sure. When I was a boy. Okay, I won't bore you with the process of ordering that board through Ella Crowe but I did. It'll come in and well, it'll be manufacturing like two or three days or something.

They gave me very kindly gave me a discount code so it was a bit cheaper than PCB way. And anyway, not sure what happened to the OSH Park one there, but no shortage of services these days to manufacture your boards. It's just crazy the hosters talking to David about it. He has grown up in a world where he has not had a low-cost PCB manufacturing service.

so yep, crazy. Anyway, when I was a boy, we didn't have these low-cost PCBs So there you go. Um, that's just a quick walk through. This is not wasn't designed to be a tutorial.

otherwise it would have been a bit more concise than this. It's just me waffling on getting this board made. So the next part of the video, we'll get the board in, order parts from digi-key or wherever. and because the driver chip has to come specifically from Digi-key or Mauser or someone like that and can't get it here in Australia.

So we'll get the part in, we'll assemble it and we'll get it working and I'll show you the final product anyway. I Hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up. As always, discussed it in the link down below.

Catch you next time you.