Electric Skateboard PCBs Sent To PCB Cart For Manufacturing

Screenshot of the Gerber’s sent to PCB Cart for manufacturing.

Finally, the electric skateboard PCBs have been sent away for manufacturing. I eventually chose PCB Cart after discovering that I couldn’t run the PCBs as a ‘Prototype’ at Silver Circuits (their maximum Prototype PCB size was 160mm in any direction, my panel was 200mm). See the Electrical Suppliers page for more info on PCB manufacturers.

The boards ended up costing NZ$330 (ouch!). This was for 3 panels of 3 boards (adding two panels only added NZ$14 to the price, so it’s worth it for back-up boards). There is the the motherboard PCB, the half-bridge PCB (both to be mounted on the skateboard), and the remote control PCB (mounted on the hand-held controller). I’m crossing my fingers and hoping there are no mistakes (well, at least no major ones that would require a redesign). One thing that I will do differently next time I design a PCB is to make sure the minimum annular ring is 0.3mm or larger. Since I had 0.2mm vias with 0.4mm holes, I had to raise the annular ring spec when submitting it to PCB cart (from 0.3mm to 0.1mm), which added about NZ$40 to the price.

I chose the longest lead-time (12 days) to keep costs down, hopefully they will ready by the weekend after next!