[TriEmbed] Circuithub, Macrofab & other quick turn assemblers

[Pete Soper]

Thanks very much, Kevin. I'll share something about my reflow setup that 
I built for roughly $300 (but it involved a lucky find of a good hood 
from some RTP lab, a wood stove flu and a really good radial fan I just 
happened to have). I'm still using the original Controleo 
<https://www.whizoo.com/> board (and my oven looks almost exactly like 
the one on their web site: love that race car IR reflective stuff!). 
After poo-pooing the drawbacks of the original version my project to 
make a much better controller has been sitting unfinished for a very, 
very long time. That tells you how satisfied I am, although if you need 
to change profiles in a hurry we must hope their firmware is much 
smarter these days. But I'm confident their current product is really 
good. The industry experience they brought into their biz was solid: 
they were not only enthusiasts (the archaic term that comes to mind is 
"righteous dudes"). More on my setup when I have some time.

On a related note, I just posted something to do with absorbed moisture 
in ICs <http://triembed.org/blog/keeping-your-powderhhhhhh-ics-dry/>on 
the TriEmbed web site.

/*TriEmbed folks that have been "vetted" are welcome to get logins on 
the site and add their own content. It's a vanilla Wordpress environment 
and there is a "role" set up to provide different levels of privilege, 
etc.  One non-negotiable requirement is a password that can outlast an 
epoch of breakin attempts. Wordpress sites are subjected to nearly 
continuous attacks. The site is what we make it to be. I am 
uncomfortable having disproportionately created content for seven years 
and would very much like to become a bit player in the stats in the 
future, and not just because my day job and other circumstances are 
"blotting out the sun". *//*("Vetting" is just to establish we know who 
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Just for instance, somebody could add a posting about the monthly 
virtual meetings *iff* the Jitsi server is up to it. If it can't handle 
more than the current number of attendees then it would be a bad idea 
IMO. But there are various walled gardens wafting perfumed translations 
of "free" from all directions...

-Pete


On 8/21/20 11:22 AM, Kevin Schilf wrote:
> Hi Pete,
>
> Please share any vendors that are cost effective at 3-10 units.  I am 
> also interested in any feedback the group has on toaster oven 
> conversions or inexpensive turnkey reflow ovens (< $500).  It would be 
> handy to have an immediate prototype capability in-house.
>
> I can recommend C-Tron (Franklin) and GRT (Raleigh) for SMT assembly 
> but the quantities involved were 100's at a time?  In both cases, the 
> service was cost effective and high quality.  I don't know if this 
> would be cost effective at such small volumes.  Volume is King.  :-)
>
> Thanks,
> Kevin
>
> On Friday, August 21, 2020, 8:48:32 AM EDT, Pete Soper via TriEmbed 
> <triembed at triembed.org> wrote:
>
>
> I'm shopping for a supplier to assemble smalll quantities of PCBs (eg 
> Q3-10 of 21 kinds of board in one case). The two in the subject line 
> are on my list but I wonder if anybody can add to it? I need something 
> akin to OSH Park/OSH Stencils: zero human comms if I haven't screwed 
> something up or gotten a surprise and ideally a week to three at most 
> from upload to assembled boards in hand. If/when the project 
> progresses there will be special requirements and that's when I would 
> approach Better Boards or the like, so shops like that are not what 
> I'm looking for now.
>
> Thanks,
> Pete
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