Shulie TornelJasmine Brackett Hello Everyone. Welcome to this week's Hack Chat! !!!
Woo
Shulie: Welcome!! We have tons of questions in our sheet already! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZHahHN4kU0YBjMgrZMU9ntrmdDD8JOUmpHX2mR6Ok0w/edit#gid=0
Jasmine from @Tindie here. It's great to be hosting this Hackchat with the help of @Shulie Tornel and the Hackaday team.
KiCad or otherwise. I usually do direct kicad uploads nowdays but I'd send Gerbers if needed for plated slots
Shulie: Hopefully we can get to every question. :)
Hi everyone
This Hack Chat is part of a collaboration Hackaday & Tindie to bring content and events that encourage engineers and inventors to prototype and bring their ideas to market.
We're super pleased to have @Dan Sheadel and @Drew Fustini from @oshpark here today.
\o/
Hio!
Hi everyone! -Drew Fustini
Hi Drew !
@Jarrett OSHPark told me they couldn't do plated slots when I asked them. I did see that work around but it it felt a bit like a pain to me.
Hey Drew!
As @Shulie mentioned, there is a question sheet here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZHahHN4kU0YBjMgrZMU9ntrmdDD8JOUmpHX2mR6Ok0w/edit?usp=sharing
Once we've got through those and we have time there will be an open session.
Hi @Shayna and @Yann Guidon / YGDES! -drew
made it just in time
Radomir Dopieralski that should be about tomorrow noon
I'm sure a lot of you, especially those in the US are familiar with OSH Park, but now I'm going to ask them to give a little intro about themselves.....
About us as people, or us as a company?
Shulie: Both? :)
Yep
wait, you're people?!!
a company that allows people to retain their identities?
We are all individuals! Just like everyone else!
RE: OSH Park, we're a community printed circuit board (PCB) service! We bring you high quality, lead free boards (ENIG finish), manufactured in the USA, and shipped for free to anywhere in the world.
Dare I say, Soylent green is people. :)
yum yum
I'm Drew Fustini and have been with OSH Park for about a year and half now. I love Hackaday.io!
what about soylent purple?
we have a can of that actually!
It's incredibly strong industrial grape scent. We don't open it.
Laen (the founder and owner) saw a cool purple circuit board at Dorkbot PDX years ago
(the portland electronics meetup)
I heard a rumour that almost every purple PCB goes through your hands @Dan?
and he decided it would be a nice color to use for their batch PCB service
No, no, That'd be Kelly!
Ah sorry, I was misinformed. How big is the team?
So, maybe a bit about where we're at. As drew's typing out, we started as a side project that grew out of Dorkbot a few years back.
About 4 years ago, was when Laen decided this was either "hire some folks or quit", and Kelly and I were the results of that. :)
So, up until about a year or so ago, she was depanelling about 95% of all our orders, and got to admire all of the pretty board art.
:-)
Very nice. And this is all in Portland?
So, if you ever think your cool PCB art feels like a waste, nope! We love it! We still snap photos of the amazing ones for our personal collections.
nice, i'll bet you've seen some great ones!
Dirty Engineer For all the pretty boards.. there has got to be some that you just cringe when you see.. terrible layout and non functional
We need to start putting "Hello, Kelly" in the PCB art work. :)
Yeah! All our shipping and handling is done in our office in Lake Oswego. We currently have 4 office workers: Kelly, Gabe, and Kim who do shipping and depanelling, and Laen, who's busy running things.
(I was going to say I'd love to see your personal collections, but that sounds a little wrong)
Heh, yeah. For obvious legal reasons, we can't really publish most of them.
My favorite was a picture some time ago of a board that was two boards connected with tabs, but the second board had a note like "HEY LAEN! DON'T BREAK THIS!"
:)
hahaha
here's some photos of the office from our BringAHack party last year https://blog.oshpark.com/2016/09/24/pre-summit-bringahack-at-osh-park/ and https://blog.oshpark.com/2016/09/30/recap-of-pdx-maker-week-open-house/
Alright, so I think @loxodes has a question..
Damn, I was in Portland for PyCon.US just now, I should have visited
Nick Sayer : I'd love to see that one :-D
mega-cool
I can't see if @loxodes is here, but the question is "Do you have any future plans to support low loss substrates such as RT4350B?"
(I know I asked drew at the hackaday superconference, but I'm going to keep bugging y'all :D)
Currently, our best substrate is the FR408 used in our 4 layer service. No immediate plans to offer RF4350B. FR408 has a Dk of 3.66 , which is the same as RT4350B’s Dk. More info on our FR408 http://docs.oshpark.com/services/four-layer/
Currently, not really. We don't have enough demand for the 4 layer boards to add other services without seriously dropping our turn time. This is really the big issue with new board types: If they're not popular, they take FOREVER to get to a point where we can afford to get it fabbed.
Ok, just for the fun of it. This is one really old board that I designed back in the days when I was not doing mainly software :-D
http://www.retrotronics.info/modules/news/article.php?storyid=14&lang=english
Okay, thanks. I'd be happy with even a month or so turn time, there aren't any affordable options out there for fancy substrates.
Sorry, @loxodes.
Since we are showing boards designs and stuff... ;-)
@zakqwy, you got the next question?
The other reason is that we feel pretty strongly about supporting any new service. We really don't want to go "Here's a fancy cool thing!" and have people design a board around it, only to drop support. That'd be a huge bummer.
@loxodes this is the datasheet for our FR408 http://docs.oshpark.com/resources/FR408-High-Performance-Laminate-and-Prepreg-Data-Sheet.pdf
(we can have another round of board show and tell if we have time at the end)
oh, yes. Uh, it's like, a 4-parter.
Better get started then :)
interested in official support for plated slots, flex, castellation, andV-scoring. Thoughts, @oshpark ?
Yes to some!
:-)
it's almost like fitting in in 140 characters
love the new FB page with the pretty boards
Here's a fun offer for anyone here: We're currently working to test out flex, so if anyone has a flex-based PCB design, send it to support@oshpark.com.
ah cool!!
We'll get it fabbed, free of charge, and send you a couple to test with. :D
@Lutetium the OSH Park page? https://www.facebook.com/oshpark
@Dan Sheadel Woah that's really cool!
oooh, flex. I have some costume stuff I'd like to do.
leds on flex!
We really just need to fill a small panel. We can't promise anything about turn time or quality at this time, since this _is_ our test run.
Flex like the stuff they make the AdaFruit R-Pi Spy camera with? Kapton?
Yeah! It's kapton, 2 layer, with clear mask (no purple yet). Same specs as our standard 2 layer is the current target.
@Dan Sheadel Great offer. Wish I was working on something where I could use flex
We're hoping to send a panel to fab in the next month, but really want to see flex-only designs on it.
oof purple flex will be awesome
/me has a nasty idea to order some pi camera cables for pi zero
Is the turnaround time on the flex same as 2 layer?
but I guess all the people who want to do wearables should be exctatic
exstatic
flexible blinky wearables. Absolutely.
No idea yet on turn times. We haven't gotten a panel fabbed yet. Final turn time will be determined by order volume.
Also not sure about pricing. :) But, if you're quick, it might be free, so who cares about that detail.
@Radomir Dopieralski ecstatic
@Kevin who invented that language!
some Frenchman or what?
@zakqwy got any followup q's or shall we more onto @Radomir's?
nope, that is all!
To the other bits, no plans for v-scoring. Our process isn't set up for it, it adds a bunch of costs, and is on the whole less precise.
What are the chances for custom purple pin headers or switches or jumper wires or other components to go nicely with the PCBs? Purple breadboards? Maybe project boxes? I mean as addon-stuff similar to how you can get purple teensies now.
need to start a flex pcb design :)
We do see the need, so it might be some off-order option later, but our backend doesn't have handling for it yet, so everything would be all manual and awkward. For now, just no plans.
Lastly, the slot part of that 3 parter! IN THE WORKS.
about v-score, right? --^
^ correct.
+1 for flex! whats the best way to call out stiffener in eagle?
Slots have taken way more effort than one might reasonably expect, since we have to write a whole lot of tools that work with a whole lot of really mangled gerber files. It's a lot of custom code and huge amounts of test cases.
yay slots!
sorry for jumping the gun
I'm surprised. I've had good luck with adding an outline of the slot in dimension over a big via.
hahaha i'll bet you guys see some seriously mangled gerbers. my bad.
We still see some users who use programs that run in _DOS_
@Dan Sheadel One issue with slots is the OSHPark gerber viewer doesn't show them. It only shows circles.
That was actually your guys' idea!
wow
@Dan Sheadel slots worked perfectly on my last order. Thanks!
https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/4xmQTksw
Kevin @Dan Sheadel Any current day programs that are generating mangled gerbers that we should know about?
@Kevin Yeah, currently only the first part of a drill hit is registered, and the "slot" part gets chomped. The hacky workaround is the one we discuss on our slots page, which is drawing things on outlines.
@Shlomo Zippel great to hear! we look forward to seeing photos from burning man
our official reference for slots and cutouts http://docs.oshpark.com/submitting-orders/cutouts-and-slots/
@Dan Sheadel I still tend to pick mouse based on the way I can lift and move it in the air. Thanks to the DOS OrCAD scrolling ;-)
thanks drew! i'll definitely get some pictures
@oshpark Saw it. It seemed a bit of a pain and I didn't want to risk winding up with bad boards.
(FYI - there is a burner group here #Hacker Burners )
Nah, no callouts on CAD tools here. We have tools that auto-fix most issues already. We've sent bug reports to various companies, and they're generally not willing to fix them. Not that it matters, since no one updates from those tools anyway.
> Purple headers, wires, etc.
No plans until you mentioned it, but this sounds amazing! We sometimes get asked about headers for the purple teensies, and this would go great! If we ever wind up doing a kit or subscription thing, we'll probably wind up having to do this.
re: @Radomir Dopieralski question: we'd love to find a supplier that could do purple parts like headers, etc. I was trying to find a supplier last year but ended up in a dead end. Any tips on suppliers, please email drew@oshpark.com
Can we roll through some of the other Google Sheets questions?
So @Radomir Dopieralski , it looks like there are some purple accessories here: https://store.oshpark.com/
^ Most notably, really comfy sweatshirts with vaguely pog-shaped logos. ;)
Any chances for supporting direct upload of Fritzing files?
If anyone knows of supplier that can do purple headers, please let me know! -drew fustini
(that's my second question from the sheets)
Thanks, I will be looking forward to those, unfortunately I don't know any suppliers.
Fritzing uploads are _totally_ possible. However, there's a really nasty "gotchya" that halted this: If you add a ground plane, then draw traces, then export gerbers, your board will be shorted.
That's a shame.
Well, Fritzing has a lot of bugs, but there is preview for that.
Shulie: Next up, we have questions from @Jarrett "How are free upgrades to the super swift service picked out? Any tips to maximise our odds?"
Friends don't like friends design PCB's with Fritzing.
Because of that particular trap, we decided to _not_ add fritzing upload. We really don't want to encourage users to use it, only to find that it'll result in non-working boards. :/
@Dirty Engineer that's just blaming the tools for your own ignorance
I love Fritzing's workflow, which is really awesome, but the pcb tool itself is pretty lackluster. I hope one day it has good integration with something like Kicad for that side.
Dan, I'm catching up, and I see a mention of flex PCB...... OMG !!!
I see, thanks.
When we have extra space on the daily super swift panel, we will upgrade international orders first
and then move through a list of folks from the community that have asked us
it depends on how full the panel is for a given day
"Yeah, I'm moving to Europe to maximise my odds of Super Swift upgrades"
@Radomir Dopieralski No, fritzing pcb is just garbage.
lol
> Swift picks
Mostly random! We do try to pick through a few special cases. One of them is international, since those orders already take a long time, and we want to help out those users.
@Dirty Engineer that's close-minded thinking and doesn't push the conversation forward
hehe... we do that because international faces the longest shipping times
Thanks, it's really appreciated (Canada here).
Are self-declared micronations considered international orders?
@Radomir Dopieralski you're welcome to use Visual Basic all you like, but you're rapidly going to hit a brick wall when you need to write a driver, or do a project that is more than a couple files
I'd like to give a big shout-out to the new super-swift pricing.
I think that's an okay analogy
I can confirm that, free shipping to Mexico takes something between 1 to 3 months.
Jasmine Brackett We see that with Tindie orders too
@Nick Sayer yes an exciting thing for 2017 was the nice Super Swift pricing https://blog.oshpark.com/2017/02/01/super-swift-for-less-in-2017/
@oshpark , any plans to make more aggresive design rules anytime soon?
Yeah, international shipping is a mess. Other than the UK, I don't think I've seen any country with a generally positive shipping review.
where it is now $10/sqin versus $89 surcharge per order
@Jarrett I'm just paraphrasing Benchoff's article.
Ok, @Jarrett next question...
Shulie: "How many people will typically see the boards as they go through manufacturing?" @Jarrett question
@Dirty Engineer That's what I mean by ignorance
do ultra-precise stuff. Copper balancing is a big deal, and tricky to get right.
@willsender we list our design rules but rely on the customer to run DRC in their CAD tool. http://docs.oshpark.com/design-tools/
interesting question, @Jarrett . what do you rekon, @Dan Sheadel ?
>How many people see the boards
It's hard to say on the side of our manufacturing facilities. Probably about a dozen, based on some fab visits we've seen. From people on the Oshpark payroll, roughly 1.
I don't disagree with you, @Dirty Engineer, but you have to either defend your claim, or ignore what other people are doing :)
I actually back off my flood-plane spacing from the 6 mil minimum. Those times when I have had shorts, that's been where it's happened.
@Jarrett also asked - "Any stories of cool/unusual boards that you remember?"
Yeah, 95+% of shorts we've ever seen are trace -> Ground plane. If you consider the linear distance operating at minimum spec, ground plane isolation is an easy place to improve your manufacturing yields.
i think the most recent example is https://hackaday.io/page/3353-full-panel-pcb-painting-fabricated :)
but there has been tons of amazing boards over the years... let me find some links -drew
We see a lot! Our favorites are ones that make cool outlines, as much as anything.
@oshpark wow that's fabulous.
That is crazy.
The flower is amazing
/me looks for a better image of it
My "go to" standard art board is this dragonfly board. Does a good job of showing off not just the artistry of the colors, but how to make a functional pcb.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8179/8025166755_a28041948f_o.jpg
Do you guys ever find a cool board and make _four_ of them, one as a souvinier?
Shulie: Wow, those are amazing...
Oh here! They have it in action: http://www.lumenelectronicjewelry.com/
Impressive...!
Reminds me of lacquer work on antiques
Wow. That dragonfly board is a really neat.
Pretty awesome PCB art here
Lumen are on Tindie
@Benchoff No, but we have negotiated "you get 2 for free and we keep one"
some photos https://plus.google.com/photos/+Oshpark/albums/6333017586389944753
awesome pcb art
yes, we love Lumen up in Madison, WI (@Mike Szczys land!)
@Jarrett 's last question is 'How do you pronounce "castellation"?' :)
silent t?
Which if you google it there is an audio clip in the first result - https://www.google.com/search?q=castellation&oq=castellation&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.803j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
@oshpark I've met Robin and Marty many times. Really cool boards. Robin had a Lumenlabs booth at MakerFaire this year
I generally don't. I always type it XD
But I'm not sure it's correct.
@Benchoff that is kind of what we did with Blake for the full panel. Please get in touch with me if anyone has cool artwork ideas and wants to collaborate: drew@oshpark.com
I think the one time I tried anything approaching art it was the "I can reflow" badge.
@Benchoff There are a few Benchoff nickels floating around
re: boards, one of my favorites: https://plus.google.com/photos/100779964808096572793/album/6333017586389944753/6333018254399231794
And that wasn't very arty
That gradient is awesome
@Nick Sayer we love your I CAN REFLOW badge!
Cool PCB art tip! Find something with exposed PCB substrate and shove it under a black light.
@oshpark wow, a few drill bits were killed making that one.
@Dirty Engineer asks - "Any plans for other board thickness? 1.2mm is my preference"
(0.4 is cool too)
@oshpark I am so happy that it's inspired folks to give it a try!
well, there are going to be those flex pcbs now, they are rather thin
glow in the dark! https://twitter.com/docprofsky/status/734276550531514369
they have .8mm for half height double copper
The subset of parts you can get as TH parts compared to the universe of SMD only.... Well, hobbyists really shouldn't be locked out of digikey's whole catalog, frankly.
oshpark
spooky!
@Dirty Engineer Not immediately, but we'll add it to our list of requested sizes. It goes back to the general scale difficulties in adding a service. We have to ensure that we have enough volume to get the boards out in a reasonable timeline.
@Nick Sayer I think hobbyists shouldn't be that afraid to try SMD.
2 Layer 2oz copper 0.8mm thick Service http://docs.oshpark.com/services/two-layer-hhdc/
@Arsenijs Absolutely not!
A volume of about 1000 square inches per week is about the minimum we need to justify a service over the long term.
@Arsenijs only if we can get SMD sockets so we can change the burned chips ;-)5Volt-Junkie says:12:51 PM
@Arsenijs agree
two layer vs four layer
glowing @Benchoff
0603 is as small as I want to deal with and even that is a pain without getting a different iron and/or tip for my existing iron.
Jasmine Brackett @Dirty Engineer also asks 'Will the bug in the board preview that shows horizontal lines in solder pour areas ever be addressed? (Eagle)?'
SMD is not that difficult... I'm an old recovering acholic and mostly can do it.
Tom 0.8mm is cool, I used it to fit a pcb vertically inside a 2.0mm pitch pin header.
I have GPS modules now that I am *REALLY CAREFUL* about storing properly because they're very, very sensitive and very, very expensive.
(sorry 1.27mm pitch not 2.0mm)
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