This is a follow up from some of the questions last night, I thought I’d put down the links to where I’m getting some of the stuff. If you’ve got any other good recommendations please feel free to add them.
Batteries:
Hobby King - http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/index.asp
There’s a selection for either the global or Aus warehouse, worth noting where everything is coming from if you need it in a hurry. Normally it’s overnight from Sydney to Canberra.
PCB manufacture
PCBway - http://www.pcbway.com/
I’ve used a number of others, and at the moment they’re the best value for money for what I do. But shipping maybe a killer for hobby stuff. I’ve also used the ones below and they’ve been fine. Might do better one off shipping charges.
Edit: If you’re going to use them for 1 off prototypes - make sure you click on the button on the front page to get the 10x10 deal. It’ll save you $7USD.
I hope this works (posting from my phone) but if you need high res SLA 3D printing, Dangerous Prototypes/Ian Lesnert have a “Dirty SLA” service (like their “Dirty PCB” business):
Recently, I tried Seeed for prototype pcb manufacturing. Their customer service impressed me a lot. And the boards are cheap with high quality.Highly recommended!
For PCB manufacturing I’ve gone through the following:
Hackvana is based in Victoria iirc and outs source to China, service is
great (can catch Mitch on freenode irc via #hackvana). Pricing is pretty
reasonable and has a pretty quick turn over. Fastest board I’ve gotten with
express courier is about a week. Is affected by Chinese holidays (I.e.
Chinese New year). Main thing I like about hackvana is you can choose how
quickly your boards are dabbed thus saving money. His fab house ships
directly to you too.
Local to Queanbeyan is a mob called Lintek. They’re a premium PCB
manufacturer who fabs onsite in Queanbeyan, they seem to do alot of RF
stuff with vapour deposition process. They’re very expensive ($300 for A4
ish sized panel ““prototyping”” service a few years back) but board quality
is insane and takes about a week and a half so is a good option for urgent
prototypes during Chinese New year. They’re also an altium house so you’ll
need to provide them with Gerber’s like hackvana unless you use altium
If looking for PCB fabs, I find this a useful site, written by one of the folks on the eevblog forum.
I’ve put a lot of prototype runs through over the last year, my experience has been at the low cost 2-layer 6/6 track/space >= 0.4mm drill, it’s rare to get a board that’s not pretty good. Sometimes the silk screen is better registered than others, but no big deal. So just pick the price to arrival time tradeoff that’s acceptable.
As you move up in cost, I’m yet to have a PCB fab who hasn’t stuffed up one of my orders. Highly inconvenient, but at the end of the day it’s how the fab responds to feedback about their processes and corrects the situation. In that I’ve been quite impressed with Easyeda, very responsive and quickly replaced an order that wasn’t acceptable without a week denials and blaming everyone else in the process.
