RetroPie in a Dreamcast VMU!
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$5 a square inch for a prototype board is hardly cheap. Etchant can be made with 'mostly' household materials and costs a lot less when prototyping, and also has the ability for rapid prototyping as you don't have to design, wait 12-14 days to find out it doesn't work, waste the $20-30 it cost to produce it, design another one, spend another 20-30 to find out it's still wrong, etc. I would definitely suggest getting one printed the right way after design is tested and working, but for prototyping it's rather expensive.
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yeah the PCB fab option isnt really really cheap, but i guess you will know for sure that any problems you have are from bad design rather than a bad etch
some of the Chinese ones are reasonable. got 5 of my PiCB boards made for $10 over on "pcb way" but the postage stung me $12
the same boards from OSHpark would have been $42.05 for 3 boards, but no shipping costs
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@masteryoer it depends on how complex and how fine your design is. If you're doing stuff with big through hole components then sure. if you've got fine pitch SMD IC's then good luck getting results first time.
also by the time I've farted about with the noxious chemicals, set everything up in a safe environment, and also disposed of the chemicals in an environmentally safe way, then yeah sure, $5 per sq. in. (x3) is of the more pricy, but PCBway is $10 plus shipping for 10 copies of a 10cm x 10cm board. sure there are pros and cons to both methods, and if ultimate cheap is your goal then self etching is the way to go. but it's now become "cheap enough" that I really am beyond caring to mess about with etchant. been there, done that, got chemical burns in the T-shirt (joke)
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@moosepr I have heard of PCBWay, but didn't think to use them for smaller boards as I had thought they had a minimum size requirement. I need a couple of custom small PCBs made for some xbox 360 components that I removed for use for another console I am building for a friend. $10 for 10 boards isn't bad, but would they allow me to make 10 different designs for that same price?
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@masteryoer it's 10 copies, so if you can fit multiple designs into 10cm x 10cm then yes. but i think they have a small surcharge for multiple ccts and distinct boards from what I've heard.
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@masteryoer im not sure to be honest. you may be able to submit the one file with the multiple boards on it i guess. They do have a live chat on the page. I just did a quick online quote, 10 boards, 22x13mm (a board i have on osh) comes in at $10 but then i think the cheapest shipping is going to be about $12
the same thing from osh (have to order 12 of them) comes in at $8.80 with free shipping
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@obsidianspider Thanks dude!
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@satri360 Your build is fantastic! Is the line down the middle of the screen from damage, or a driver issue?
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@obsidianspider I accidentally broke the OLED when I was struggling to put the guts in the case. Second LCD had defect as it showed horizontal split and now I am waiting for the third one.
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That's a lot of OLED screens, and possibly a lot of money.
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@satri360 Did Adafruit cover the one that was defective?
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@ABrugsch said in RetroPie in a Dreamcast VMU!:
@masteryoer it depends on how complex and how fine your design is. If you're doing stuff with big through hole components then sure. if you've got fine pitch SMD IC's then good luck getting results first time.
also by the time I've farted about with the noxious chemicals, set everything up in a safe environment, and also disposed of the chemicals in an environmentally safe way, then yeah sure, $5 per sq. in. (x3) is of the more pricy, but PCBway is $10 plus shipping for 10 copies of a 10cm x 10cm board. sure there are pros and cons to both methods, and if ultimate cheap is your goal then self etching is the way to go. but it's now become "cheap enough" that I really am beyond caring to mess about with etchant. been there, done that, got chemical burns in the T-shirt (joke)
I've recently received boards from both SeeedStudio which also is a China pcb manufacturer that I'm pretty happy with.
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seeed is on my (long) list of recommended PCB shops. DFRobot is another... for small orders they are mostly pretty competitive with each other, just depends what fab features you need as some extras are more expensive than others. for instance, OSHPark is definitely one of the more expensive places, but they include ENIG finish in that price, which pushes the price up massively at PCBWay. it's definitely all horses for courses and worth shopping around
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