Future H5 buyers & assembly

[plee1024]

Good the hear!

[me262]

Still here, still interested. I'll keep this tab up to keep reminding myself.

Not sure if you have looked into PCBway, because they do offer a hosted project, where anyone can say "I need x of this board" and the customer can order it, and you still get a kickback on those that order it (however I'm not sure of the percentage).
It might make sense to try it on a smaller project before the big stuff.

Even going from Digikey to Mouser for ordering from a BOM, some places have different SKUs and some lead times are horrendous when other more available options are present. It's a big toss up in ordering components that are available and for a reasonable cost.

[exciter]

That tells me the market is definitely there. Thanks for keeping us updated.

[coonsgm]

Once Exxos gets some stock on hand available to order, I’ll put out another YT video highlighting the H5 again.

[exxos]

I have not really heard anything back from the manufacturer yet, I presume they are still sourcing all the parts.

The only time they mentioned it is querying a load of tracks which were not connected to anything (which was actually intentional).

Another problem is I basically fallen out with that PCB fab house now. I have been constantly battling them over another project for the past few weeks.

I wanted to get another project shipped with the motherboards, and they kept billing me $174 postage. There are only small board so I doubt that postage figure is even remotely accurate. I said to them multiple times I wanted shipping with the motherboards to save the costs. They completely ignored it on every occasion. I further went to say I don't want assembly any more and just want a full sized stencil for machine assembly, gave the details and they just quoted $12 which is not a proper stencil.

I really don't know what is up with these China PCB manufacturers. They seem to get things right for the first couple of orders and then go completely incoherent every order after that. I keep saying it is like dealing with a bunch of teenagers where is their first day on the job. But even gets even more frustrating when they blatantly ignore things you repeatedly tell them!! This is pretty much the reason why I abandoned every other PCB manufacturer because I just end up repeating myself 50 times over and getting absolutely nowhere

The past few weeks I have been talking to some UK companies about taking over the PCB production and assembly. Of course UK prices are not going to be as cheap as China. But the amount of time I waste battling to get through to people, is it really cost effective in the end ? Plus by the time I have wasted £200+ on postage and import costs, even if UK place charges more , even £200 more than china PCB manufacture, it's not actually going to work out much more expensive for some orders anyway. Plus as I generally buy the parts in the UK, shipping them to China, as I have said multiple times, is just a ongoing nightmare which I do not want to deal with, and plus all the import and export charges as well.. However I look at it, I don't think China fab is really as cheap as one may think...

I don't know what the price would be for large assembly orders yet, probably too expensive overall. But I certainly cannot deal with China suppliers any longer. Spending 10x longer trying to get anything done, as opposed to paying double or triple for the assembly job.. It is just going to have to go with a more expensive route because I'm precisely out of patience battling idiots in China all the time. I've literally been doing this for almost 30 years now! Get what you pay for I suppose!

Anyway, the motherboards are in production, that is all I can really say, it will likely be some weeks.. It is getting close to the Chinese New Year as wel,l which is going to delay things somewhere along the line.

[exxos]

Finally got the sample images from fab. It looks correct from what I can tell..

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[Badwolf]

They look lovely!

BW

[agranlund]

Nice!!

[Chewbode]

Man, this is really exciting. I missed out out on the last run of these boards by just a few months and am really glad it's coming back around. Thanks so much for all of the hard work and pain you're going through @exxos! Very appreciative!

[ijor]

Beautiful pics!