Hi Josh,
I take your point about more people coming along over time to make another full order viable,
I guess I'm testing the water, my thinking was that all these boards go through a number of prototyping iterations where a small number of boards are purchased by Andrew & John at higher unit cost for the purpose of hammering out a final production design, so it would seem to follow that the PCB production house being used must be happy to produce small prototyping runs with maybe the hope of larger runs to follow.
I am not suggesting that all PCB's should be offered this way but maybe a once in a while adhoc fulfilment of lower demand boards (ones that have had several re runs) to fill the gaps in builders systems where the waiting time may turn out to be lengthy.
I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Andrew again because organising group buys and distribution must soak up a huge amount of his time, as an ebay seller myself I can appreciate the organisation that goes into keeping track of order.
regards
David Fry
On Saturday, January 4, 2014 4:15:28 PM UTC, Crustyomo wrote:
On Sat, 4 Jan 2014 04:44:47 -0800, David Fry wrote:
...
>I would welcome feedback on this posting from other S-100 builders out there as to what the
general consensus is on smaller >batches/higher cost for the lower demand PCB’s,
of course the final decision is yours
but it would help out and encourage the newbies J
Hi David, You have the right idea of how pcb manufacturers require a minimum quantity. I've toured two local manufacturers and I can say that there is a lot of set up or a lot of expense. One plant uses relatively inexpensive equipment but the boards are put through one panel at a time. The other plant uses some high tech automated equipment that must have cost in the millions. Don't even waste your time going to plant B for a small order. Plant A are more likely to welcome any business. But they have limitations too. They will get tired and annoyed if you request a lot of little jobs and you will see the price creep up. For example, requesting 5 boards every 6 months is worse than requesting 10 boards every 12 months.
I am more into the old computers, as such I have learned to just be patient for the right deals to come along.
What I think would help is to get more customers. I think John said it recently that most new comers are pleased to have found this group. I'm guessing there are a lot of people out there that would enjoy playing on the S-100 bus, but they just don't know about it.
I have been meaning to make a visit to my local colleges and talk with the electronics teachers there. I'm sure there's at least a couple of bright students in each school that would like to go beyond the text book. I wonder if they still teach Digital Electronics with 74xxx series? Or do the students learn about 74xxx in their Electronics History class?
Cheers,
Josh