May pay to do some research on them, they may stick it to ya elsewhere.
Anyhow, my quote is for the 20mm 6V version. Definitely good for those that want to have a pocket missile for those that wanna use a 70.2 with a single cell.
Ok, just thought I would update the thread.
I still have not heard back from the manufacturer as they said they would be away until after the new year holiday, but the coronavirus has gotten in the way, so will give it another week to contact them.
I will ask if they are happy to split orders to each buyer, they may be happy to do this, will wait and see. It should be pointed out that if we do this, they will have no firmware installed and each buyer would need to do this which is more expense.
I will like to cap the price at $40 per driver, but will be able to reduce costs for each buyer if they order more than one driver.
I wont be able to make the order until all units are filled in. I’m hoping we can get most of the 100 units paid for so I don’t have to bear the cost for drivers I can’t move on easily.
What ever happened to this? I'm interested in 17mmx1 and one FET tail switch. I've got a c8+ and M21A that I'd try it in. They are both currently sst40. I also have the FW21. I'm a noob so I'm buying for the opportunity of getting into some cool stuff.
Question about manufacturability. I see folks mentioning PCB cost as up to $5. Have you considered panelizing boards and ordering long? I’m working on a basic 17mm driver, only a 2-layer board with lighter copper so it’s already cheaper, but by tiling several onto a larger panel (10x10cm can fit about 25) and ordering more panels, the price per driver goes way down and I’ll have stock for a long time. With the batch size I’m planning, my PCBs should end up costing under 25 cents each and assembly will be simpler and quicker since it only takes one paste, one trip to the pick-and-place, and one trip to the oven to finish two dozen drivers.
Already thought of that in my own quote, set up a panel of 5x5, 25 boards in a panel, still came out to a pcb cost of 4-5 dollars each, just so I could get more boards done in a single go within the SMT machine, add in the cost of the components and the actual manufacture, still 20-25 dollars per board in total.
Only time the cost could go down if if it goes from small volume limited production, to higher volume less limited. Which means I could purchase more components in volume.
Only uptick to this is that I got all local manufactures involved, from the PCB House, to the Printscreen, even the company I work with for the actual SMT assembly.
Just an update everybody, I have been in talks with an electronics manufacturer based in the US, he will be able to help produce these locally in the US and can do a slightly better price than what I could get out of china.
We need a minimum order quantity of only 50 boards of each type, which means we can get started with a run of either the 17mm or 20mm version of this driver once 50 units are filled in for one size.
My preference would be to get the 17mm drivers out first, but if we can fill in 50 orders, we can get on with them.
We are also looking at the tailcap boards, at this stage it might be easier for us to either supply the boards or put a kit together, will wait and see.
I will update this thread in due course to confirm price and ordering instructions.
I am super interested on how the process to order PCB + assembly. There are tons of information about order PCB boards only, but extremely limited information regarding the options to do PCB assembly. Like sourcing BOM if it is overseas, they use different components, etc.
I hope we can all learn how the process goes.
Could we do something like the LED4POWER drivers where the main board is 17mm and then use some kind of PCB extension to achieve 20mm?