At running the risk of making all sorts of people mad - I can’t afford an ulcer.
We are going to continue the PCB service, but the price is now $5 a square inch. I know we are going to loose customers with this, and I am very sorry to all hobbyists out there. You must now pay for the ignorance of the rest of the world.
Today was the cream of the crop. We received multiple phone calls from potential customers asking questions like “Can you send me a CD with your PCB software on it?” insisting we provided PCB software for our $2.50 service. Phone questions like “How much does a 2.34 x 1.1 inch PCB cost?”. I am jaded at the moment, but I simply cannot be answering the phone for questions like these time and time again.
“Can I use SuperXYCad?”
“What’s a gerber?”
“Where do I get my order number?”
“Where is the PCB service on your site?”
I feel bad telling people I cannot afford taking their phone call and spending time explaining the process for a $7.50 order. But Monday’s are extremely busy for us.
Two panels from China arrived today. Orders from the week of the 8th(!) and the week of the 15th all shipped out today. I am told the week of the 8th was delayed because of yield problems. Something we cannot for see.
China is shut down for 3-4 days during the May 1st-7th labor day holiday so the 4-22 panel may be delayed 3 days.
We appreciate the current customers! It’s always a lot of fun to see what people are coming up with. We simply cannot continue with the service as it is. We hope that the $5 price will allow us to keep our level of customer service.
sparky:
We received multiple phone calls from potential customers asking questions like “Can you send me a CD with your PCB software on it?” insisting we provided PCB software for our $2.50 service. Phone questions like “How much does a 2.34 x 1.1 inch PCB cost?”.
I feel your pain… I have had much the same experiences when selling electronics. I purposely do not provide a phone number on my web site so that I can simply click “Next” to ignore brain dead questions. One time some guy even tracked down my home telephone number and called me up at 5 or 6 in the morning to ask if I was still selling the product that I had listed on my web site as currently available for sale!
That’s a shame - it sounds like a tough situation to be in. Would the price increase be smaller or even unecessary if you had software that validated gerbers thoroughly, and you only accepted validated files? Or is it the phone communication that is a problem? Could you still consider lower rates for validated, no-hassle submissions?
At $5/sq.in., the service still has value for small boards, but it significantly changes the threshold at which people would look at alternatives. For example, for me (outside the US therefore higher postage) Olimex becomes a better deal once I need anything more than 7 square inches in one order. That is, 7 square inches including postage would cost US$42, which is exactly the same price as a minimum order at Olimex for around 24 square inches. Of course if I had a need for 5 square inches I might be tempted to wait a while until I had a little more or just run off a few extra copies as spares.
Of course the extra features - silk screen on both sides, 8 mil tracks, 20 mil via size, and routed board edges - can still make this an attractive service for other reasons.
Its a shame i do not have more time, i would otherwise lend a hand with this. As i see it, sparkfun could become big/huge, but in order for it to get there it needs more customers, which (in the paradox of business) means more staff to handle the work, but not enough money to hire them!
Perhaps you should adopt a support ticket like service for pcb’s. I have used them before where emails are redirected to a database where people can log on to through a web interface and answer.
The cool bit is that you can have options like ‘answer with standard email’ for the standard ones which you then select a email from a drop-down list then click send.
“Can I use SuperXYCad?”
“What’s a gerber?”
“Where do I get my order number?”
“Where is the PCB service on your site?”
Would be sorted.
I can do it as an ongoing thing, and release it as a GPL through sourceforge.
So if it would help, possibly allow a drop in cost when u clear backlog!
Regards,
Martyn
PS. I have been looking for an excuse to program somming for a while now, so no biggie, just remember i am 18 years old, with loads of college work! lol
zilym - Someone once found my cell number through a whois search and called me about tech support for a $10 JTAG programmer. I was in between classes at CU. That was a fun one.
Martyn, you’ve already helped us out quite a bit!
At $100 as a minimum order for most PCB jobs/fab houses, it makes people think, read, and work before submitting an order. At $10, people just submit anything and don’t take the time to read. We can’t force people to read the forum or even the product description most days.
We are most interested in seeing the price reduced. We will need a hefty DRC software in place to help customers with the simple problems. Steve is working on a stand alone software program to detect DRC and drill file problems. If we can have the customers help themselves, it will offload a lot of our work back onto the customer - where it should be for $2.50 an inch.
We would love to provide the $2.50 service to customers who can submit a flawless order. But if anything goes wrong, are customers prepared to have their order double in price? There are very few hassle free orders. Hopefully, with some sort of DRC software for customers, we can alleviate all of these problems.
Hey, how much are those gerbers? Can I order a few? Heh heh.
I’m getting close to making a board for a MMC/SD card datalogger and I’m bummed to hear about the price increase. I’ll probably still use the service for the first prototype, though.
Actually, I’ve seen at least one full service PCB maker offer a reduced cost double sided PCB like this at significant discounts without any rule checking OR electrical checking, so a No Questions Asked/forum support only service at $2.50/in2 would be a reasonable variation.
Then set up two contact points. One for your $5 boards, and one for the $2.50 boards. I’d suggest the second one be a web based form with a zip attachment script, so they CAN’T ask questions and all the info could be fed into a database easily by hand or by automated process.
Hmmm… second thought, I’m still mulling about how to keep people from cheating and direct contacting while using the cheaper service.
That I haven’t heard about. I thought it was more just a matter of too many phone calls and too many 274x format errors. If someone screws up their design, so be it, they’d have to resubmit instead of having SF do the check before submission.
Still, it’s also a matter of keeping people from cheating the system and calling/emailing while still trying to get the cheaper service rate. Maybe, after you have your DRC checker working, have it either spit out a response email to the effect of “Your board has problems, we can continue with user support. Cost will be blah (at $5/in2)” or an email of “Everything looks OK. Do you wish to send for fabrication at BLAH ($2.50/in2) or have a design review done at the cost of blah (at $5/in2)”
is there any possibility of having the cost per inch go down for larger boards? I understand that helping out customers makes a $7.50 order not worthwhile, but as was mentioned, this service becomes very very expensive for any board even marginally big, even at $2.50 per inch.
well, i would have thought u could ask for bulk discounts in that way. I dunno tho, perhaps going down to $3 a square inch + $5 admin would work out for large boards?
Dunno if nathan can handle the extra work of setting up add-hoc payments!
Anyhow, if ur going large then perhaps other pcb proto services would be better? The idea of sparkfun’s one is not everyone need a euro card’s worth every time they get pcb’s made!
A hundred percent price increase is a bit hard to take. I’ve made four boards without a hitch using Eagle just by following the tutorial given by Sparky. My boards are around 8 square inches and the price jumping from $20 to $40 will greatly reduce my interest.
Sparky, does Eagle output give you less headaches or can you even tell what layout software was used from the gerbers? You could steer customers to several “supported” layout packages and let this forum be your support.
A hundred percent price increase is a bit hard to take. I’ve made … boards without a hitch using Eagle just by following the tutorial…
Same here…I do understand Sparkfun’s reasoning…business is business, but for those who are not part of the problem it’s a tough issue to take. For small boards, doubling the price doesn’t hurt so bad but the person who has a larger design…ouch!
It seems like the same design checking overhead would apply if the board is one square inch or one square foot. Why not have a $10 minimum charge to cover that overhead with a lower cost per inch. The $5/in2 pricing will continue to encourage lots of small boards that consume time.
As always - I am impressed by the options our users’ brainstorms have come up with. But remember, whatever solution we try, it’s got to be less administration that what we are operating with currently. Either the price has to go up or the admin/time killer has to go down. I am really hoping that we can allow users to submit through a PHP portal of some sort. Pittuck is really trying hard.
At the risk of creating an exclusive club - I would very much like to offer the $2.50 for those who can use it. But at first glance - this doesn’t fix the problem. Now we would have to monitor who is ordering which service and what do when do when a member fails a DRC? If an order is so bad we have to cancel it, it takes 10-15 minutes just to find and issue a credit card refund. Accidents are going to happen - we just have to be able to handle it quickly.
I think the order problems / gerber issues could be very beneficial to you and Martyn - but Ben (my PCB guy) is going to kill me…
For all of our repeat customers - we really do appreciate your business! If you have learned how our DRC process works, and can get your software to export files in a fashion we can use, we would like to offer you the $2.50 service: http://www.sparkfun.com/shop/index.php? … itemid=405
I got some more college work to do + 220 papers to deliver then i will update the checker.
But i think it is 80% ready to go. thats not 80% complete, but i dont think it give errors where there are none (Apart from unused drills / apertures and metric, but will be fixed soon)
I will start working on a proper GUI this weekend, perhaps aiming for ‘roll-out’ the following weekend?
Why not only alow submition via the PHP DRC checker. Then the people that are submiting bad files will be rejected (with an automated constructive hint as to why and how to corect the problem). This way you will only receive good orders and the bad ones will be rejected before payment is taken.
You could also use the PHP to calculate the board size so that all the user has to do is select the files to send, and select the number of required boards. If the checks pass then payment is taken and the files are sent (from the PHP) to Ben.
I think the main problem is that the people that are making the mistakes (including me :oops: ) don’t realise that they are doing anything wrong. The above sugestion will educate people without costing you any time or effort.
People can then make as many submitions as they like and learn by the results from the DRC, and you will only receive the order if and when the user gets it rite.