I’ve just received my shipment of boards from SparkFun and all i can say is they look outstanding! As good as any of the boards we get professionsally made at work. I’m very pleased!
Thanks again SparkFun for bringing professional PCB’s to a manageable price point!
Thanks Caffeine!
If you can send a picture of your PCBs to spark @ sparkfun.com I’ll post them here…
-Nathan
I also received my first boards and I have to say they are awesome. You couldn’t tell them from professional boards.
Now if I hadn’t made that stupid pin swap in my design that renders the boards completely useless :shock:
Well, guess I have to prepare the next order.
-Jan.
Me too and it is awesome and cheap.
You guys rule!
Jan - I can’t tell you how many PCBs I’ve weathered with mirrored footprints, big caps getting in the way of jumpers and bigger parts - all sorts of stuff goes wrong with PCB layout. That’s what makes it so great when it does work on rev. F.
-Nathan
Caffeine:
I’ve just received my shipment of boards from SparkFun and all i can say is they look outstanding! As good as any of the boards we get professionsally made at work. I’m very pleased!Thanks again SparkFun for bringing professional PCB’s to a manageable price point!
I’m ecstatic! My boards work! hurrah!
I made a slight design error (microstripped trace was too narrow, 11 times narrower than it should be, my inexperience with Protel showing through!) But everything still works just with a reduced range (RF transmitter)
That’s the beauty of this service, if I’d paid $100 for a few boards (next cheapest price for equivalent boards in the quantity I wanted) I’d be annoyed, but since it was only $10 or so for this particular board, it’s more of a learning experience 
Nathan, I’ll try and take some good quality pics tonight. I managed to solder some hard to remove components in bakwards on a few boards so I’ve got some work to do first. (Mental note, make pin 1 more obvious next time)
here are my boards…
Thank you thank you thank you for the pictures!
The boards look nice!
AWESOME! Here’s a picutre of my board. You guys are changing the way I do things!!!
We just had another two batches ship out today. I encourage anyone to post their thoughts on their PCBs.
Gold Phoenix is attempting to change their rules about how we do things. Nothing to report yet but we will keep the PCB deal going as long as possible.
-Nathan
My board are in one of those shipments, just got notification they shipped today. I’ll post pictures when they arrive.
I hope the pending changes won’t prevent you from continuing this valuable service. I’l be willing to accept a lot of restrictions to be able to have sample boards and small quantites made. You’ve already saved me from making some expensive mistakes!
Anyone receive their boards from the latest batch? I got a shipping confirmation last Wednesday but after diligently running to the mailbox have come up empty. Somewhat surprised as mail does not usually take this long.
I got ths same notice on Wednesday as well, but no boards. I’m hoping they’re in my mailbox as I type.
My, but we are an impatient lot, aren’t we As hoped, my boards arrived in the mail today, complete with the mistake I designed into them!
US Mail took their time, but I finally recieved my board today. This was my first PCB attempt and while I made a few mistakes (amazingly poor job with the silkscreen), I was able to get the microcontroller up and running without incident. Need to order a couple of alternate components due to spacing issues, but thats the advantage to living in the same state as Digi-Key – extra parts are only a day away.
Great service and my complements to SFE. While this was my first board, it is certainly not my last!
Beauty of a board!
Welcome to the wonderful world of PCBs. Once you start, it’s hard to stop 
-Nathan
And for grins, here is my completed board. Though not a super complex design, I cannot imagine trying to build this by hand on a perfboard. Finished cost: $12.50 for the PCB, ~$18 for components, ~$12 for the LCD, ~$12 for the power supply. It mostly worked on the first rev, though the yellow “wire of shame” shows where I got sloppy and swapped some pins. While I was able to hack around it (giving up the backlight control), that was just luck. Knowing that if I really screwed up, I could always submit a new design and only be out the cost of the PCB plus some of the parts is what made this project fun rather than stressful.
Here are a few things I learned (the hard way) that might be of interest to other first timers:
1-Make sure to print out the datasheet package info for the components you are using and compare against your finished board art. For example, I figured that all 8p8c plugs were likely close enough to be interchangable or could be made to fit. Bzzzt – wrong.
2-For many projects, mounting holes are a really good idea. In the excitement of my build, I was so focused on the basic board I forgot them. I suspect some nylon wire ties on the cables will likely work, but a couple of well placed holes would have been nicer.
3-If doing a microcontroller project and have unused pins, adding a pin header with those pins plus power and ground can potentially save a design. I did this thinking I might do an expansion board, but it became my “fix the pin screwup” hack.
4-Spend the extra time to make the silkscreen look nice. I figured this was not important since I had the schematic and board art (I drew it after all). During assembly I came to realize that its much nicer to have everything already marked on the board, even if you are just making one.
5-Make sure pin headers and other reversible components have their orientation marked (pin 1 or something). The default pin headers in Eagle don’t have pin 1 marked. Trying to follow traces on a board to find pin 1 is a real pain.
As everyone else has remarked, the quality of these boards is great. Once again, my complements to SFE for a great service at a price that makes this fun for a hobbyist.
Sweet! My board arrived the other day and it’s absolutely perfect. Check it out with components:
http://scottcutler.gotdns.com/images/powercircuit.jpg
I have only a single solitary complaint–the turnaround time. In fact, complaining is unfair since it was still arrived within the stated range. But if there was an aspect of the service that I’d like to see improved–even if it meant a slightly higher price–this would be it.
-Scott
Just received my second board order, and assembled it:
http://pobox.com/~JasonHarper/LT1940.jpg
This is a perfect example of what Spark Fun’s service is good for. The board is a 1+ MHz dual switching power supply design, which I was rather uncertain about (I’m a digital kind of guy). Therefore, I built it separately, so I’m only risking one square inch rather than the 14 sq. in. of the full final board. Whether it works or not, I’ll only ever need one copy of this board, so the 3-5 board minimum order from most manufacturers is utterly useless to me. And a circuit like this CANNOT be breadboarded, so it does have to be sent out for manufacture (a home-made board is impractical, since the switcher chip requires plated-thru thermal vias underneath it).
I could have easily spent $75 getting this board made elsewhere. From Spark Fun, it was $4.95 including shipping.
Nice board Jason! Looks like a GM862 driver (3.8v?) and logic 5V? Want to share the specifics?
We of course get a chance to look at all the designs as they are being panelized. It’s quite exciting to see what looks like a really odd board layout, come to life, populated and running!
-Nathan
