8 Apr
2011
8 Apr
'11
8:02 p.m.
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.
--
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/