The Board on the Bench: 12 Years Of PCBWay
Anniversaries are usually the company’s party. This one is all yours.
Join the party by checking out the anniversary page.
Twelve years is a long time in technology. Entire projects can come to life, go obsolete, then wither and die. Some workhorses get deployed with little fanfare before going on to have long and productive lives, and nowhere is this more evident than in industrial embedded systems, where legacy software runs for years, and temporary fixes end up becoming part of the landscape.
The same is true for companies. What starts as a small, boutique outfit built to meet the needs of makers can grow into a production powerhouse, one that turbocharges the maker industry and makes it easier for a design to move from the workbench into the world.
In today’s article, we’ll be checking out the latest from our friends over at PCBWay, digging into their current anniversary specials that aim to give you massive discounts on custom designs, AND we’ll be introducing a new toolkit built squarely for Radio Hackers readers.
But first, the anniversary. Let’s go.
The Barrier That Packed Up & Left
Back in 2014, small-scale production was essentially a closed shop. While there were options available, the reality was that getting things to the prototype stage would take money, time and plenty of patience.
Patience wasn’t the only requirement you’d need, either. For the most part, it would also take a company name, production volume numbers in at least the hundreds and a deep budget that enabled the financing of all of this.
The evolution of electronics has focused on the availability of cheap miniaturised components, but the reality is that it’s the boutique manufacturers like PCBWay that have really enabled electronics to flourish in the hobbyist capacity.
For years, these small companies chipped away at the barriers to production, and each year, the benchmark would get lower and lower. Purchase orders were replaced by coupon codes, and five boards were an acceptable number for a prototype rather than five hundred. Prices moved into a hobbyist’s budget rather than a multinational's, and turnaround times went from months to weeks or, in some instances, days.
The flow-on effect of this is far bigger than mere cost or convenience. Previously, a single flaw in production over hundreds of units could sink entire projects before they’d even been launched. Removing the barrier changed this entirely. A bad revision was no longer an expensive mistake, and most problems could be solved with a new iteration.
For many people, modern electronics shine because the components are smaller, cheaper and (usually) more efficient. However, the real revolution was that these boutique producers helped experimentation go mainstream rather than belonging to a select few as it did in the past.
The Party Is All Yours
You don’t have to be an investigator to see where things are going with this. And here’s the thing. While an anniversary sale is the company’s party, the person who walks away with the real benefits is you.
Twelve years of PCBWay removing the barrier to production have led us to today, where the payoff looks like a coupon that has your name on it. The month of July is party time, and the party is all yours.
To celebrate, there is a mixture of specials and sales available that can help take your project from concept to prototype without breaking the bank. To get your head around it, the best thing to do is to visit the anniversary page and see the specials for yourself. Once you’re there, you’ll want to claim the coupons so they are available in your account to apply to designs.
You can do this by clicking the “Use It Now” tab on the specials window. This will move the coupons into your account, where they can be applied to your project.
If your project is ready for production, you can simply apply the coupons to your project prior to moving the project to the engineering team for review. Alternatively, if you need some additional assistance to get your project up and running, you can hit the “Quote Now” tab and request support from the team.
There are more than $400 worth of coupons available across multiple tiers, but the best bit is that there are discounts available across nearly the entire PCBWay line, which happens to include 3D printing and CNC production as well. These run across the entire month of July, meaning that you’ll have plenty of time to get your project in order to capitalise on the discounts.
While the coupons are great value, one of the coolest parts of the sale is the ability to choose custom board colours. Now, you can lean into your project’s aesthetic and not just be tied to plain green anymore!
About That Board On The Bench
This is Radio Hackers, not Radio Readers, so it makes sense that with specials like this, we’d take one of our own designs off the workbench and send it off to production as well. The exciting news is that that is exactly what’s happening behind the scenes at the moment.
This publication has always been about understanding the airwaves and what is happening around us, rather than just focusing on pure exploits, so it’s natural that any tool we look to release focuses on that perspective as well. You’ll learn more about this little side project in the coming weeks, but the inclination to scan, observe and understand the spectrum around us should give you a good idea of where the project is heading and what it’s all about.
This build is also a great way to highlight the “one-stop shop” nature of PCBWay’s production services. While the firmware has been written, developed and tested by the author, the engineering team gave us some great support in selecting the PCB layout, choosing solder masks for the board and casting a general eye over the entire process to ensure things were above board (sorry for the pun) on the quality control front.
Thanks to this, the design quickly evolved from a rat’s nest of wires and jumpers on a breadboard to a sleeker prototype that is ready for firmware testing. We’ll be releasing more information regarding this project over the month of July, and when the firmware moves into the production phase, we’ll also be giving away a few prototypes for readers to review.
The next few months are going to be fun. Huge shoutout to our publication partners for their support in helping to bring this project off the bench and into the prototype phase.
Just Build It
Makers are like pack animals, we do our best work when we are not alone. For every design sitting on a random workbench, there is a shared schematic or a bug someone else solved. This means the next person often won’t have to start from scratch. The ethos of the maker and open-source scene is that a good idea usually gets better when you take on feedback from others.
In case you missed it, this is the real invitation here. The coupons are the excuse, but the whole point is the build. So clear a corner of your own bench and design the thing you have been putting off. It does not have to be clever. It has to be yours.
Once it exists, share it. We’d love to see your build on socials (tag the editor), and PCBWay also maintains a community page where makers are able to highlight their own builds, keep them online for others to order and occasionally, share in some rewards.
As for our own board, when it is ready, you will be able to order one straight from the PCBWay community page as well, fabbed to the same spec we ran ourselves. More on that over the coming weeks.
Twelve years ago, none of this was within reach of a person at a kitchen table or in a garden shed. Now, the gap has closed. The anniversary is PCBWay’s.
The bench, the build and whatever you make next are entirely yours.
Investigator515 explores the RF spectrum, cybersecurity, and the hidden tech behind modern espionage.
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