SparkFun Mechanical Ecosystem

I heard somebody use the word “ecosystem” the other day and I think I will try it.

I received an email about a Qwiic board and thinking that interesting, I looked at the product page. I found the mechanical information sparse.

(Some 3D files would be nice, but are less important.)

The ruler image for some products is cool, but does not have the details I was looking for. I hoped for drawing with board outline and hole information such as position, size and mounting clearance. There are Eagle files—should one who embraces Sparkfun boards plan on getting Eagle?

The hole pattern among Qwiic boards look similar. Perhaps there is a scheme to Qwiic mechanical. Maybe one can even stack some boards.

In general, SparkFun seems to lean toward Imperial screw sizes. The standoff products are for 4-40 and #6. Just looking at the board pictures, the holes look like they would clear #4, M2.5 and maybe M3. It is not clear to me what screw-head diameters, and standoff diameters are OK. Or even whether nuts are OK. SparkFun sells “4-40 Phillips head screws”, and I think it likely that the head diameter would be 0.219 inches max, and the boards are designed for that. I suppose I can get Eagle and do some math.

Some boards require cantilevered mounting (washers needed?) or additional support. I don’t see any board edge mounting hardware in the SparkFun products that might give me a clue.

Perhaps I am being dense and missing the obvious.

Hello, and thanks for posting.

I received an email about a Qwiic board and thinking that interesting, I looked at the product page. I found the mechanical information sparse. (Some 3D files would be nice, but are less important.) The ruler image for some products is cool, but does not have the details I was looking for. I hoped for drawing with board outline and hole information such as position, size and mounting clearance. There are Eagle files—should one who embraces Sparkfun boards plan on getting Eagle?

We have 3D files for some of the products in our catalog, but not everything. For boards SparkFun makes, Eagle is what you will need for detailed 2D dimentional data on our boards. You can download Eagle for free from Autodesk at the link below.

  • - [Autodesk Eagle

  • [/list]

    The hole pattern among Qwiic boards look similar. Perhaps there is a scheme to Qwiic mechanical. Maybe one can even stack some boards.

    As far as I know, we don’t have any standard hole pattern for any of our boards, Qwiic included. We provide mounting holes for convenience but there’s no standard for size. You would just need to see what screw and nut fit.](Download EAGLE | Free Download | Autodesk)

    Thanks for the fast SparkFun response.

    OK, Eagle it is. And since I am lazy: Does anybody know of any utilities that create outline and mounting hole drawings from Eagle?

    I am curious about what people actually do to mount Sparkfun boards.

    Eagle can export DXF and STEP files.