8 Apr
2011
8 Apr
'11
10:26 p.m.
I have a bunch of desktop reflow ovens for assembly, the CFL's do NOT
like them at all, they all start to rapidly dim during the HEAT process
of the ovens, not sure - must be a lot of noise or something, the ovens
are on a different circuit so its not a voltage drain.
Philip Pemberton wrote:
On 09/04/11 01:38, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote:
I have my plastics for my joysticks done out of
Indiana, my PCB's from a
firm in Utah, I source my IC's and components from Mouser. The only
things I can't get here in the US are my custom silicon contact parts,
there is no money in them, so nobody seems to want to do them and I
can't find anyone in the US that actually MAKES, not sells USB cables,
all the companies source them in from China, so I buy those direct.
All of the assembly is done here in NY and shipped.
Unfortunately it seems most of the UK manufacturing companies have
gone bust, and the few who are left aren't really interested in
small-scale work unless you're willing to pay well over the market
rate...
The Eurocircuits boards were fairly reasonably priced, and much better
quality than the Gold Phoenix boards -- the soldermask is lighter, but
WAY thicker and tougher. On some of the early prototypes (before I
perfected the reflow profile) the soldermask started to split and
crack around the FPGA.
Curiously enough, I never had that problem with the Eurocircuits
boards, even with the "omigosh it's burning!" reflow profile. Neither
board type took well to being pre-baked, though -- it's a pretty easy
way to oxidise the plating. Fixing that mess was great fun and
involved a bottle of metal polish, two bottles of PCB cleaner and one
of those brown rubber PCB cleaning blocks...
Ick. Not gonna do that again.