Marek,
LOTS of choices for resins. My requirements are not difficult to meet, especially compared to yours, and there are plenty of suitable resins are available from multiple sources. And, more/better ones coming out all the time. SLA resin is a growing market.
My LED problem is getting suitable pre-assembled strips, saving me the cost/hassle of doing custom flex-circuits, and having them assembled and tested. The LEDs I use are readily available from several manufacturers.
Good grief!! The stuff that can go wrong!! I’m surprised that the sources just disappear like that.
LLoyd
It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see.
Henry David Thoreau
Well, I’ve worked out the LED problems. It’ll be a bit more expensive, but actually better. Doing custom flex circuits gives me a lot more flexibility to do things as I want, rather than having to work with the existing strip form-factor. I can use a different LED for the small gauges, which fit better, and the flex circuits can have a better mounting means designed in, simplifying the 3D printed retainers. My PCB supplier can do the assembly of the LEDs for the large gauges, and I’ve sorted out how to easily handle the small ones myself, with a minimal SMT soldering setup. So, a bit more expensive, but better overall. Should be ready to order the first samples in the next couple of weeks.
I knew you’d figure it out!
Now, order enough for a possible future!
Take care with the temperature and the time if you sold manually the small leds. They are fragile. Idealy it is better to have a real thermal reflow profile for the smt components…
New LED PCBs are done! They’ll go out for fab in the next few days.
Good news is, this eliminates the need for plastics to hold the LED strips in place! These PCBs will be self-locating.
It’s an ill wind…!
Great new improvement!
Yes, incredible screen shots that even I can read. They’re exactly like the x-rays my oral surgeon showed me just before my last tooth implant. Astonishing work! Good on ya, Ray.
Your design chops are amazing Ray!
Absolutely amazing.
This art work belongs in the MOMA – right next to the E-Type on permanent display there.
This project is turning out to be FAR more “educational” than I expected. I’ve been designing PCBs since the '70s, though never gotten as deep into the fabrication aspects as I am now. I always had other people to handle that part for me. But, it’s remarkable how things have changed since the “olden days”.
When I did the original “Accurizer” back in ~2002, I did a small run of PCBs, that, IIRC, cost me ~$200 for 10 samples. Comparable boards now cost me $.50! The PCB fab house I use takes small orders as “filler” for larger orders. PCBs are produced in large “panels”, some as large as 24"x24" or more, with multiple customer designs merged together to fill up as much space as possible on each panel. Any unused small spaces on the panels they fill with small numbers of small boards, like mine, and they do this at a price that makes me wonder how its worth their while. I can do anything that fits into 100mm x 100mm for, get this, $2! Here is an example: the PCB that goes inside the small gauges to hold the 9 little RGB LEDs:
There are 8 PCBs in 100mm x 100mm. I get five of these panels, 40 PCBs in all, for just $11, including shipping from China! Because they are, of necessity, odd-shapes, rather than the more conventional rectangular, I had to “panelize” them myself, which is something I’ve never done before. So, I had to find the necessary software, and learn to use it. Note the rows of tiny little holes in four places on each PCB where they attach to each other. These are called “mouse bites”, and are used to enable breaking the individual boards apart once assembly and testing is complete.
This will also be my first time buying solder mask stencils, for applying the solder paste used to attach all the components, and doing the solder stenciling and full-panel re-flow soldering by myself, in my own shop. These stencils cost far more than the PCBs themselves. Until now, the countless SMT PCBs I’ve done I’ve always been able to either have an assembly house handle the assembly, or I’d just hand-solder a few myself. Neither option is viable for this project. So, education!
But, I’ll finally be ordering the PCBs and stencils today or tomorrow for sure, so this project is slowly inching its way closer to reality!
@Ray_Livingston, this is truly fascinating. This thread is the one I come to first every time there is notification of a reply. I never knew this kind of thing could be done cost effectively, or that I could read about the process as it evolves. Thank you for taking the time!
Like many, following this with interest and totally amazed at what Ray is doing!
Maybe one day we can get a virtual tour of the Ray Liv Labs. Amazing even PCB production …
Do they cut these things out by using something like a water jet?
One of the jobs I did when I was toolmaking was to produce the dies that punched the holes for the components on a PCB some of them were down to .9mm
Really interesting work, this is how its done now;
Nope. Just a CNC router. Small round holes are just drilled, with little carbide bits. Larger ones are routed.
Absolutely incredible! Yet similar to many other Chinese industries, like flat screens or cell phones. High tech machines indicating phenomenal capital investment. Yet, at the same time, extremely skilled labour doing repetitive yet precise chores, like aligning plastic and aluminium layers on the boards, taping them precisely, or nailing the boards to a substrate. Careful manual inspection by a team of women reminiscent of those operating sewing machines in the US.
I can’t imagine ever doing that in the US nearly as efficiently. And volume is the key–they have the business. Ray, is there any viable alternative at all besides Chinese manufacturing for this and similar projects you may have undertaken?
Certainly not for small volume like this. Doing these boards in the US would cost, literally, at least 10-20X as much.
There is very little manual labor involved at this point, other than some of the up-front design validation and setup. Even that is mostly automated. The fabrication is highly automated. Alignment handled with fixtures, and/or cameras and computerized positioners.
Here are the other two panels, ready to send out:
