If you were following comments in one of the previous blog posts I just received my first order of circuit boards from OSHPark.com. This order included version 1 of my button board and a preliminary interface board to connect a variety of sensors and some of my other boards to an Arduino Mega 2560.
I got to experience the “joy” of being one of the initial test subjects for the brand spanking new OSHPark.com site. It actually worked pretty well and was rather impressive in terms of the graphical response you got from it. It would evaluate the files you uploaded and convert them into a graphical rendering of the finished product. When I ran my boards through the system I did notice that the silkscreen appeared to be NOT the rear/bottom view as the site described but instead it was the “Superman X Ray Vision” view. If you’ve used Eagle and a few other competing PCB CAD programs this is what you normally see when working on your board. Your test will be “reversed” or “mirrored” and the holes will be in the positions they would be in from above. It is thus like you are looking through the layers from above. I mentioned this oddity in my comments on the job but don’t know if they’ve resolved it yet by changing the code or changing the description.
The timeline for my order is as follows:
- May 21st – Placed Order (T=0)
- May 25th – Tweet @laen replied by @OSHPark reported that the system is not sending notices yet. Indicates board have been reviewed and panelized. (T+4)
- May 29th – Received official email that said boards on panel for May 31st. Notice website reports May 30th as panel date. (T+8)
- June 7th – Received notice saying boards sent to the fabricator. Probably just an update to the software of the site and the boards were sent prior to this point. (T+17)
- June 8th – Received notice saying boards received from the fabricator awaiting de-panelization. (T+18)
- June 15th – Boards apparently processed for postage based on postmark. (T+25)
- June 18th – Received boards. (T+28)
As mentioned I expect most of the dates to be unreliable other than the fact that it took 28 days start to finish. The site still has not changed from a status saying my boards are waiting to be de-panelized and nothing about being shipped. Obviously it is a work in progress.
Here is the collection of boards received
First order from OSHPark.com. My Button Pad board and the preliminary interface board to connect a variety of sensors to the external Arduino mega.
The spacing seems to be exactly what the CAD said it would be and the holes drilled seem to be very accurate and centered like they should be including some of the very small vias. I will need to crack off and dremel/sand off the rough spots from the edges where the boards were connected together.
More pics:
Interface board
Button Pad 1.0 with several buttons placed
Button Pad v1.0
Button Pad 1.0 Top
Button Pad 1.0 Rear
At this time I am waiting for 330 ohm 0603 resistors to arrive. They were on back order and should arrive in a few more weeks. Once they arrive I need to use my infrared preheater to heat up the boards and then do a quick solder on each of the resistors before connecting all the various through hole parts. Once that happens I’ll update with a new photo showing the finished boards.