Getting electronics manufactured/bulk ordering

I'm looking into getting a quantity of stepstick x 4 motor drivers, RAMPS and Gen7 boards manufactured. These won't be kits, they'll be completed boards. If anyone knows any companies they deal with that manufacture and assemble PCBs, please can you let me know and I'll get quotes. I'll update this post with quotes from different companies. I'll be selling these from the UK, but manufacture doesn't necessarily have to happen in the UK. This is at an early stage, so please, no demands to give me money for orders! If other people are interested in forming a bulk order, get in touch.

Supplier	Item	Qty	Price	Date	Notes
Newbury Electronics (UK) http:/www.pcbtrain.co.uk/	Stepstick	100	?	WIP	Getting quote
Newbury Electronics (UK) http:/www.pcbtrain.co.uk/	Gen7	100	?	WIP	Getting quote
Newbury Electronics (UK) http:/www.pcbtrain.co.uk/	RAMPS	100	?	WIP	Getting quote

Cool! You can do HTML tables in the forum!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2011 12:32PM by droftarts.

I've been looking at doing the same thing, for Gen7, Sanguinololu and RAMPS as it would be useful to have a UK source of electronics.

I have a few colleagues who are professional PCB builders and have access to PCB manufacturing kit for private projects. They've been over the files and think the main boards are fairly straightforward to make quite inexpensively. The stepper drivers are a little more fiddly due to the size, but they still don't think it'll be too much of a problem. Hopefully in the next few weeks we'll have an idea if it's economic to build this way or if it's cheaper to place orders with established PCB manufacturers, or buy kits/fully soldered from mainland European suppliers. So I'd be interested in the bulk price breaks you can get from your exercise.

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Julian

Downham Market, Norfolk, UK.

Please note, Gen7's licence as of v1.3 doesn't allow commercial use of the design. Either use v1.2, give away the boards for free or negotiate about a custom licence.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

@Bluesteel - If you have got any prices, please share


@Traumflug - Thanks for pointing that out. It might be worth highlighting that on the wiki page - I thought GPL v2 was okay for commercial exploitation. Stepstick and Sanguinololu are also GPL v2, RAMPS is GPL. It would be good if someone could comment on whether what I propose contravenes the licensing, I don't want to upset anyone. I'm happy to talk about a small licensing fee per unit - I'm won't be giving them away for free! I would also like to use the latest, most up-to-date versions.

However, while the people that create these items should expect some reward, to move the community along things like the electronics need to become cheaper and more readily available.

@droftarts - I haven't any finalised as yet, but should have within a couple of weeks, then I'll be happy to share.

I second droftarts thoughts about the situation regarding electronics versions and current licensing covering them as obviously I too don't want to upset anyone and would like to ensure everyone gets their fair dues.

I like the idea of small licensing fees as it keeps things affordable and those who's contributions become most popular have greater income streams.

If I can do it and the day job allows, I'd like to make a small income stream through RepRap production so I can re-invest into a few development RepRap project ideas I have - printing with Nano Ink being one of them. It'll also help spread to RepRap Meme to others who want RepRaps too (and give them an easier ride by supplying complete kits). Covering costs with a little additional amount to fund a development steam would be ideal. But I do want to make sure I stay the right side of the licensing side of things...

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Julian

Downham Market, Norfolk, UK.

If you're having them fully assembled professionally, would Gen6 (or a modification thereof to add heated bed/full processor speed support) be a better choice? Both Gen7 and RAMPS use through hole components (good for DIY assembly but bad for machine assembly, though I don't have any actual cost figures), and RAMPS requires an Arduino Mega (extra cost).

First, of all, yes, I'm probably biased on this topic. Still I hope you see my plans try to enhance RepRap as a whole.

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It might be worth highlighting that on the wiki page - I thought GPL v2 was okay for commercial exploitation.

True, my mistake. The Gen7 main page suggested all of Gen7 to be GPLv2, while the board's page states a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 licence. I changed the main page.

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However, while the people that create these items should expect some reward, to move the community along things like the electronics need to become cheaper and more readily available.

The question almost as old as RepRap is, is RepRap about being cheap or is RepRap about being wide spread. Some parts being cheap doesn't neccesarily mean they're used everywhere. For example, building a WolfStrap is still cheaper than bulding a Mendel, still almost everyone builds a Prusa or Sells Mendel.

Currently I see three groups of participants in the RepRap market:

- Spin-offs, like MakerBot or mendel-parts, which - while keeping a open source licence - deviate their own designs more and more from the RepRap community. They make money, to be competitive they apparently have a minimum company size of about 5 to 10 people and technical enhancements exist, but are moderate. This is the traditional business model and at some time in the future they'll likely merge into one or two big companies, held by investors.

- Copy shops, which just download some design, manufacture and sell it. They also make money, technical enhancements are close to zero. Some of them do developments, but closed source.

- Hobbyists, which throw out a design here and there and let the community handle it. Some designs get attention of the public somehow and their designs are successful. Most of them just fill a wiki page or two, being unnoticed. They get their paychecks by some other means.

Now, the idea of Gen7 is to merge the best of these. Like the hobbyists, keep the design as open and as close to RepRap as possible. Like the spin-offs, support the design at a moderately professional level (Gen7 is a fulltime job). Like the hobbyists, involve and support casual developers. Like the spin-offs, keep the margin mostly at the developer. Like the copy-shops, distribute the design widely. Last not least: be true RepRap, be replicatable.

Agreeing on some sort of moderate licensing fee is perhaps a way to get there. I'll PM you about that.

If it's about getting widespread distribution, work on helping people to replicate electronics. Just like with plastics parts, every Mendel owner isn't far away from making a few Gen7 PCBs for his friends. Vitamins aka. electronic components are available almost everywhere in the world.

That said, if you want to sell a design as a ready-to-use component, Sanguinololu, Gen6, Teenyslu are probably all better than Gen7. Just like a PP3D is a better ready-to-use printer than a Mendel.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

And this is my problem with a lot of the current devs. They scream "ITS NOT FULLY OPENSOURCE" when any of us talk of building a RR motherboard based around the chipKIT boards or any other Microchip PIC32 based board. If you mention it in the main RR IRC chat and you get a 15-20 minute lesson / arguement on how RepRap must be 100% OPEN and no single point on any design should be closed. But then we come to the forums and read about Gen7 and other contribs being closed for commercial sale. When you point things like that out, you are told "that's different".

In all reality it is no different from Microchip saying I can not modify their TCP / IP stack because they want to make money from it, and opening it up will prevent that. If you are going to preach OSHSW and OSHW then make it completely open and allow full modification and commercial / retail sales. Lets not turn this into a double standard environment.

I agree that devs need some form of return on their investment, so open a damn webshop and sale their wares. Anyone with a PC $9 a month and the ability to download Drupal can have a fully functional webshop with PayPal payments up in less than a week. And other than the $9/month investment ITS TOTALLY FREE.

Also I could care less about Gen7 as I am a Sanguinololu devotee.

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Charles Gantt.
Build blog [themakersworkbench.com] <---- my personal site
Build worklong [www.thebestcasescenario.com]

You're totally free to modify designs with a non-commercial clause.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY