rewards for sharing

[NeverDie]

Wouldn't the solder paste dry out during shipping? I'm not sure that applying components to dried out solder paste would work.

[emc2]

No idea. I would assume it can be packed in a way to prevent this (vacuum sealed maybe?)
You can always email them to have more infos.

[scalz]

I'm curious to see what this solder paste application looks.

I know that not every seller ship solder paste for many factors, like conservation.
Digikey for instance ships to France, but not Mouser.
When i order from digikey, i always receive it very well packaged in a special cold bag (as it's better to store solder paste in cold place like a fridge..).
If it would dry, i think that would mean that flux has evaporated which is not cool!
When not in cold place, then solder paste becomes creamy, i don't know how they package this. or maybe they send the boards in cold bag.. :)

[NeverDie]

I suspect there are some solder pastes which don't evaporate all that easily at lower temperatures. For instance, SRD flux seems to evaporate pretty quicklly, but ChipQuik flux doesn't seem to as much. As far as I know, solder paste is just solder balls mixed with flux.

[FotoFieber]

@NeverDie
I really like the "RFM69HW interstitial board for Pro Mini Temp-Humidity sensor" and ordered from OSH park last year. They arrived soon.

Now I had to use pcb.io, as there don't seem to be all the files on openhardware.io

I ordered on 28. of december and they are still in fabrication.... quite frustrating if I compare the service to OSH park. And the other manufacturers are to expensive (delivery to switzerland).

Please add all the necessary files to openhardware.io, I don't think that it is open now, as the gerber files are missing and I can't choose to order, where I wan't.

[NeverDie]

@FotoFieber said:

@NeverDie
I really like the "RFM69HW interstitial board for Pro Mini Temp-Humidity sensor" and ordered from OSH park last year. They arrived soon.

Now I had to use pcb.io, as there don't seem to be all the files on openhardware.io

I ordered on 28. of december and they are still in fabrication.... quite frustrating if I compare the service to OSH park. And the other manufacturers are to expensive (delivery to switzerland).

Please add all the necessary files to openhardware.io, I don't think that it is open now, as the gerber files are missing and I can't choose to order, where I wan't.

Done.

[FotoFieber]

@NeverDie
Thx very much! Just ordered some other boards.

[PCBNG]

Hi Folks,

Jonathan from PCB:NG here. Thought I'd drop by, offer to answer any questions that you might have.

Just to be clear: we currently offer, while we're still in beta, both blank PCB and assembly service. Blank PCBs most certainly do not have any solder paste on them - just a nice ENIG finish. In fact, they're the highest quality PCBs that you're likely to come across, especially for the price (which is beta only). Better yet, unlike anyone else, all of our PCBs are fully tested - DFM testing on the way in, full E-test on the way out.

All of our offerings are typically shipped within 12 calendar days. This is not an absolute, but we do ship on time, or early, more than 90% of the time.

Note that we may not offer blank PCBs after beta, and the end of beta is only a few weeks away. Which makes sense, since our goal is to drive the cost of PCBA down to something affordable. And in fact, we recently announced a "sub-beta" for what we call "economode" - more details here: https://blog.pcb.ng/we-jam-econo/

Cheers, and thanks for your interest.

Jonathan

[emc2]

Thanks Jonathan,
I guess I was mislead and thought we were also able to get solder paste even for blank PCBs. My bad!

Any interest to see with @hek if it would be possible for you to join openhardware.io as a manufacturer? :)

[PCBNG]

Hi EMC2,

No worries - just wanted to respond, since as many have pointed out, shipping boards with solder paste in place would be an interesting logistical and packaging challenge :)

Cheers,

Jonathan

[NeverDie]

Closing the loop: today I received the boards from pcbs.io. They look like nice boards.